Jean Williams is a Senior Research Fellow in the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Introduction: Women and Sport or Women's Sport? 1. Victorian Sporting Variety, Women's Education and Writing 2. The Olympic Games, Popular Imperialism and the "Woman Question" 3. An Age of Speed 4. Football Interconnections and Olympic Parallels 5. "For the Most Part, the Team Was Given Private Hospitality of the Most Lavish Sort": Women's Hockey, Brooklands and Aspects of Empire 6. Women, Sport and Culture: From the 1948 London Olympic Games to Rome 1960. Conclusion. Appendix 1: Clubs Belonging to the All England Women's Hockey Association in the 1899-1900 Season and Their Colours. Appendix 2: Dorothy Gwyn Jeffreys; Winifred Gwyn Jeffreys and Edith M. Thomson Hockey Jottings (unpublished: Kensington, London circa 1898). All England Women's Hockey Association (AEWHA) File D/1/ 1 Bath University Archive and Special Collections, Bath. Appendix 3: Women's Participation in the Modern Olympic Summer Games 1896-2004. Appendix 4: Schedule of International Federation of Women's Hockey Associations (IFWHA) Conferences 1930-1983. Appendix 5: Scotland versus Ireland Programme 23 March 1935 at Glasgow High Schools' Club Ground, Old Anniesland. Appendix 6: Wales versus England Programme 10 March 1935 Merton Abbey, Wimbledon. Appendix 7: England V South Africa Programme 28 November 1936 Merton Abbey, Wimbledon. Appendix 8: The Brooklands Racing Careers of Some Prominent Women Drivers Between 1920-1938.

This book is an historical survey of women's sport from 1850-1960. It looks at some of the more recent methodological approaches to writing sports history and raises questions about how the history of women's sport has so far been shaped by academic writers. Questions explored in this text include: What are the fresh perspectives and newly available sources for the historian of women's sport? How do these take forward established debates on women's place in sporting culture and what novel approaches do they suggest? How can our appreciation of fashion, travel, food and medical history be advanced by looking at women's involvement in sport? How can we use some of the current ideas and methodologies in the recent literature on the history and sociology of sport in order to look afresh at women's participation? Jean Williams's original research on these topics and more will be a useful resource for scholars in the fields of sports, women's studies, history and sociology.