Lee Jackson. Palaces of Pleasure: From Music Halls to the Seaside to Football, How the Victorians Invited Mass Entertainment.

Abstract

Lee Jackson’s Palaces of Pleasure is a fascinating history of the evolution of social pleasures into profitable mass entertainment in the nineteenth century. Victorians, claims Jackson, craved pleasure. Entrepreneurs recognized the potential of emerging consumer markets and often pushed the boundaries of legality and respectability in pursuit of profit. Jackson traces the rapid evolution of public leisure and mass entertainment as it was shaped by desire, legislation, and the forces of opposition. Much of the volume is devoted to London, but other cities emerge as centers of mass pleasure. The volume consists of eight thematic chapters examining the emergence or development of specific examples of mass entertainment. Some were more successful than others. As reformers sought to reduce gin consumption, entrepreneurs used new licensing and tax legislation to carve out a new form of public amusement. The gin palace, with gaslit and gilded interiors, evolved from eighteenth-century gin shops, where...