Play up! Play up! And play the game! Sport at the late Victorian girls' public schools.

Abstract

Although in recent years Victorianists have eagerly cultivated fields of sport and women's history, they have produced surprisingly little relating two areas.1 Historians of women have virtually ignored physical dimension of struggle for female emancipation,2 while historians of sport have reflected sport's traditional male orientation by neglecting distaff side. As W. J. Baker noted recently in Journal of Sport History, the history of British women in sports ... stands high on agenda of work to be done.3 What limited material there is on women's sport history as such has tended to be produced by physical educators or amateurs like former players and journalists whose methodology can only be described as narrative-descriptive.4 A broad historical perspective permitting an exploration of relationship between women's sport and social change is noticeable by its absence. Interpretation and analysis if they exist at all