Research Catalog
Prizefighting: the age of Regency boximania.
- Title
- Prizefighting: the age of Regency boximania.
- Author
- Ford, John.
- Publication
- Newton Abbot, David and Charles, 1971.
Items in the Library & Off-site
Filter by
1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Request in advance | SG 2025.17 | Off-site |
Details
- Description
- 208 p., plates. illus., facsim., ports.; 23 cm.
- Summary
- Prizefighting in Regency England was a cult. The sport was patronised by princes and dukes, even thought it was at times illegal; it excited the imagination of writers such as Dr Johnson and Hazlitt; it was the subject of prints by Rowlandson and the Cruikshanks; Lord Byron and George Morland revelled in the company of pugilists and sparred with their cronies. Yet it was a sport quite different from boxing, both in its style and its rules. Pugilists fought with their bare fists, and fights lasted as long as the fighters could stand - often seventy or more rounds. Severe injury was the rule, and death sometimes occured. Most of the Fancy (followers of prizefighting) came from the new industrial towns and the slums of London: they made up the large crowds which thronged every prizefight. The prizefighters themselves were popular idols rivalled only by criminals like Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin. A special slang evolved, bets were taken on fights, especially in public bars, and the inevitable criminal elemant attached itself to the sport. In this history of prizefighting the author looks objectively at both the glamorous and the dark sides of the sport, using contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, prints and memoirs, and vividly evokes the excitment of the times. -- Inside cover.
- Subjects
- Genre/Form
- History
- Bibliography (note)
- Bibliography: p. 192-197.
- Processing Action (note)
- committed to retain
- ISBN
- 071535325X
- LCCN
- ^^^73883184^//r88
- OCLC
- 240630
- SCSB-10710401
- Owning Institutions
- Harvard Library