Swimming with Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale
Sport, Health and Exercise in eighteenth-century England
by Julia Allen
Paperback (No longer our product)
(November 2012)
ISBN: 9780718892760
6.1 x 9.17 inches
Price: $38.00
In stock
A well researched and highly readable exploration of the history of British sport, viewed through the lens of the life and work of Samuel Johnson and his friend and correspondent Hester Thrale.
‘Swimming with Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale’ challenges the popular image of Samuel Johnson as a man who favoured energetic discussion over physical exercise, enthroned in an armchair peering short-sightedly at a book. Thanks to the diarist and author Hester Thrale we have many anecdotes that connect Dr Johnson to a variety of sports, and Julia Allen, following Lytton Strachey’s advice to attack her subject in unexpected places, uses entries from Dr Johnson’s dictionary and anecdotes about the great man as her window into the world of eighteenth-century sport and exercise. Revealing a world both foreign and familiar, Allen takes the reader through a range of sports and activities, from boxing and cricket to dancing and coach travel to swimming, riding and skating. She reasserts women’s place in eighteenth century sport, especially the luckier ones such as Mrs Thrale, and draws on medical treatises and reports to show how dangerous these sports could be, and to explore the theories upon which contemporary notions about health and exercise were based. Combined with fascinating biographies not only of Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale, but also of a host of eighteenth-century sporting celebrities, Swimming with Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale gives a fascinating insight into a century where things were done very differently, often with dangerous consequences. This eccentric book brings together pieces of eighteenth-century life to create a vivid picture of the whole, making it essential reading for anybody interested in history or sport.
- By (author) Julia Allen
'...[Julia Allen] has now turned her curious gaze on a perhaps surprisingly athletic Johnson, who recognised that 'much happiness is to be gained' and 'much misery escaped by frequent and violent agitation of the body'...' Mary Smith, Transactions of the Johnson Society, 2012. '...There is surely no-one better to write this book than Allen, whose passion and unrivalled knowledge shine through on every page [...] ...[Swimming with Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale] will reward those dedicated readers who desire an insightful look into a much different time...' Tom Edwards, Swimming Times, April 2013.'...probably just the sort of book that Johnson would have employed in his compilation of the Dictionary. ... Inspired by her knowledge of lexicography and a desire to rescue Johnson from caricature as a 'stout, elderly-looking man in a wig', Allen reproduces a collection of curious gobbets to illustrate the physical activities enjoyed by Johnson and his contemporaries.'Kate Chisholm, Times Literary Supplement, 3 May 2013"...let yourself be pulled out of the present,... and enjoy the pleasure of lingering amidst the images and poetic thoughts provided by the characters.Diana Garrist, British Journal for the History of Science, Issue 2, Volume 47 (June 2014)
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