Table of Contents

Introduction: Waiting for kick-off 1. What football was not: The history of Shrove football 2. Entertaining the elite: Football at the public schools and the universities 1555-1863 3. Football outside the public schools: From American indians to Origin of the Species 4. An epoch in the annals of sport: Britain's first football culture, Sheffield 1857-1867 5. Footballing Backwaters? London, the F.A. and the rest, 1860 to 1867 6. Football splits up but goes national: The creation of a national football culture 1868-1873 7. Kicking and carrying: The geographical distribution of sporting rules 1860-1873 8. Cups, leagues and professionals: Rugby and Association 1874-1901 9. Conclusions: The real history of the creation of modern football.

About the Author

Dr. Adrian Harvey is a tutor for the Workers' Education Association and for the Extra Murals Department of Birkbeck College, London University. He worked at a postman until 1992 and obtained an MA in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck College, London University and a D.Phil at Nuffield College, Oxford University in 1996. His works on sport and recreation have appeared in a number of periodicals and books.

Reviews

"Adrian Harvey's study is a fundamental and revisionary reappraisal rooted in imaginative and painstaking research which others have barely touched....Invaluable."
-James Walvin, University of York