Full Description
In the wake of the American and French revolutions, European culture saw the evolution of a new leisure regime never previously enjoyed. Now we speak of modern leisure societies, but the history of leisure, its experiences and expectations, its scope and variability, still remains largely a matter of conjecture. One message that has emerged from a multiplicity of disciplines is that research on leisure and consumption opens up a hitherto untapped mine of information on the broader issues of politics, society, culture and economics. How have leisure regimes in Europe evolved since the eighteenth century? Why has leisure culture crystallized around particular practices, sites and objects? Above all, what sorts of connections and meanings have been inscribed in leisure practices, and how might these be compared across time and space? This book is the first to provide an historical overview of modern leisure in a wide range of manifestations: travel, entertainment, sports, fashion, 'taste' and much more.
It will be essential reading for anyone wishing to know more about European history and culture or simply how people spent their free time before the age of television and the internet.
Contents
Introduction Rudy Koshar, University of Wisconsin at Madison Museums: Leisure Between State and Distinction Nick Prior, University of Edinburgh The Circus and Nature in Late Georgian England Marius Kwint, University of Oxford Flaneurs in Paris and Berlin Esther Leslie, Bicycling, Class and Politics of Leisure in Belle Epoque France Christopher S. Thompson, Ball State University 'As I Walked Along the Bois de Boulogne': Subversive Performances and Masculine Pleasures in Fin-de-Siecle London Christopher Breward, London College of Fashion Crowd Control: Boxing Spectatorship and Social Order in Weimar Germany Erik Jensen, University of Wisconsin at Madison Travels with Baedeker: The Guidebook and the Middle Classes in Victorian and Edwardian Britain Jan Palmowski, King's College, London 'Every German Visitor has a vlkisch obligation he must fulfill.' Naitonalist Tourism in the Austrian Empire, 1880-1918' Pieter Judson, Swarthmore College La Vielle France as Object of Bourgeois Desire: The Touring Club of France and the French Regions, 1890-1918 Patrick Young, Brooklyn College The Michelin Red Guides: Social Differentiation in Early Twentieth-Century French Tourism Stephen L. Harp, The University of Akron Germans at the Wheel: Cars and Leisure in Interwar Germany Rudy Koshar, University of Wisconsin at Madison Confessional Drinking: Catholic Workingmen's Clubs and Alcohol Consumption in Wilhelmine Germany Robert Goodrich, Augustana College Hollywood Glamor and Mass Consumption in Postwar Italy Stephen Gundle, University of London Leisure, Politics and the Consumption of Tobacco in Britain since the Nineteenth Century Mathew Hilton, University of Birmingham
