They Run with Surprising Swiftness: The Women Athletes of Early Modern Britain

Description:

Women have battled for a place in the male-dominated world of sports throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, overturning obstacles and highlighting the changing position of women in societies around the world. This has become one of the defining stories of our age and the central story of women's sports. They Run with Surprising Swiftness tells a different and much older, forgotten story with many of the same themes.

Sports have never been the sole preserve of men; women athletes have always been there. As this book shows, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Britain, women of all ages ran, fought, rode, played football, cricket, tennis, and other sports. They competed in tough, head-to-head events that required extraordinary endurance and skill. Though not labeled "athletic" at the time, these women performed feats that in our age would certainly earn that descriptor. They Run with Surprising Swiftness recognizes these remarkable athletes and their achievements and aims to restore them to their rightful place in the long history of women in sport.

Review Quotes:

What Radford does particularly well is bring forward the athletic talent and competitiveness of early modern British women through analyses of the variety of media coverage, broadly defined, of the races, games, bouts, and matches. That coverage yields details about the crowds who watched, the competition, promoters, and the prizes they offered, and the athletes themselves. It is remarkable how Radford traces not just one-off races but, in some instances, the long careers of the women. . . His is an especially important contribution for women and gender studies. In a field where sport is vitally important historically and in the present, comparatively little attention has been given. Few Women and Gender Studies (WGS) programs or foundational texts include even the barest mention of societal shifts that have happened within or because of women's efforts in athletics. Radford's text offers up an abundance of evidence that we should be including sport in foundational classes in WGS courses.