Sporting Cultures, 1650–1850

In the eighteenth century sport as we know it emerged as a definable social activity. Hunting and other country sports became the source of significant innovations in visual art; racing and boxing generated important subcultures; and sport’s impact on good health permeated medical, historical, and philosophical writings.

Sporting Cultures, 1650–1850 is a collection of essays that charts important developments in the study of sport in the eighteenth century. Editors Daniel O’Quinn and Alexis Tadié have gathered together an array of European and North American scholars to critically examine the educational, political, and medical contexts that separated sports from other physical activities. The volume reveals how the mediation of sporting activities, through match reports, pictures, and players, transcended the field of aristocratic patronage and gave rise to the social and economic forces we now associate with sports. In Sporting Cultures, 1650–1850 , O’Quinn and Tadié successfully lay the groundwork for future research on the complex intersection of power, pleasure, and representation in sports culture.

Sporting Cultures, 1650–1850 is a collection of essays that charts important developments in the study of sport in the eighteenth century.

• Imprint: University of Toronto Press
• Published: January 2018
• Pages: 376

• epub: 9781487510749
• pdf: 9781487510732
• hardcover: 9781487500320

Daniel O’Quinn is a professor in the Department of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.

Alexis Tadié is a professor of English at the Université of Paris, Sorbonne.

"This collection of essays, edited and introduced by O’Quinn and Tadié, highlights continuities between physical activities of the early modern period and contemporary pursuits…While erudite and useful, this collection is best for upper-division or graduate studies."

E. A. Sanabria

Choice Connect October 2018 vol. 56 # 2

"Viewed together, [the essays collected in this book] argue persuasively that by continuing to scrutinize sports in the long eighteenth century, we will enhance our understanding of the period’s most significant social forces and trends."

Alexander H. Pitofsky, Appalachian State University

European Romantic Review, vol 30 no 4

"This Olympian volume charts the rise of modern sports in British and French culture over a very long eighteenth century…Individual essays tackle not only specific sports and athletes but athleticism’s place in philosophy, bodily discipline, and medicine."

Jayne Lewis

Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

"Sporting Cultures absolutely raises the bar for research on sporting culture – I consider it to be a serious advancement in the field of the cultural history of sport. Well aware of the current scholarship in the field of history-of-sport, O’Quinn and Tadié have shaped an approach that makes Sporting Cultures an original, significant, and rigorous contribution. Not merely a collection of short stories or micronarratives, Sporting Cultures consistently builds and accumulates arguments and turns satisfyingly again and again to questions raised by previous sections."

Donna Landry, School of English, University of Kent

"The critical landscape of sport studies has been changing, and this volume is a welcome addition to scholarship that engages with the cultural practices of sport. The writing is sophisticated, and the essays offer compelling and original arguments."

Sharon Harrow, Department of English, Shippensburg University