Sport As History:Essays in Honour of Wray Vamplew

Published to mark the career of one of sports history’s pioneers, this book traces the evolution of sport across three continents. It brings together some of sports history’s leading scholars to investigate not only the history of sport but also how that history is written.

This Festschrift marks the retirement of Professor Wray Vamplew – an internationally-renowned leader in the field of sports history. His 1976 book The Turf was one of the very first academic histories of sport and he has been a prolific writer, scholar and teacher for almost forty years. No one has played such an important role in the field of sports history across North America, Europe and Australia. President of the Australian, Australian Society of Sports History (ASSH), the British Society of Sports History (BSSH), the European Committee for the History of Sport (CESH) and the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport (ISHPES), Vamplew is currently editor of the North American Society for Sports History’s (NASSH) journal, the Journal of Sport History.

This collection reflects his interests and his appeal across the three continents, the essays deal with sport in America, Australia, Britain and Ireland and focus on the themes of national and regional identity, gender, trade unionism in sport and historiographical debates. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the history of sport and how it is studied today.

This book was published as a special issue of Sport in History.

Tony Collins is Professor of the Social History of Sport at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. As well as writing a trilogy on the history of rugby - Rugby’s Great Split, Rugby League in Twentieth Century Britain and A Social History of English Rugby Union - he has also worked with Wray Vamplew on the Encyclopedia of Traditional Rural Sports (all published by Routledge) and Mud, Sweat and Beers: A Cultural History of Sport and Alcohol.