A vital part of daily life in the nineteenth century, games and play were so familiar and so ubiquitous that their presence over time became almost invisible. Technological advances during the century allowed for easier manufacturing and distribution of board games and books about games, and the changing economic conditions created a larger market for them as well as more time in which to play them. These changing conditions not only made games more profitable, but they also increased the influence of games on many facets of culture. Playing Games in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America focuses on the material and visual culture of both American and British games, examining how cultures of play intersect with evolving gender norms, economic structures, scientific discourses, social movements, and nationalist sentiments.

List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: From Snapdragon to Three-card Loo: Rediscovering Nineteenth-Century GamesAnn R. Hawkins, Miles A. Kimball, Erin N. Bistline, Allison Whitney, and Catherine S. BlackwellSection I: Games in Motion1. Bodies in Play: Boxing, Dance, and the Science of RecreationKristin Flieger Samuelian and Mark Schoenfield2. Baseball in the Frame of Gilded-Age AmericaMatthew Von Vogt3. "We are only horses and don't know": Sport and Danger in Fox HuntingErin N. BistlineSection II: Communal Games4. "The Memory Game": Play, Trauma, and Great ExpectationsSean Grass5. Seeing Victorian Culture through Croquet's "Treacherous Wire Portal"Catherine S. Blackwell6. Acting Charades in 1873: Girls and the Stakes of the GameHeather Fitzsimmons FreySection III: Playing the World7. Dangerous Games: The Advent of Wargaming in the Nineteenth CenturyAndrew Byers8. The United States as Wonderland: British Literature, U.S. Nationalism, and Nineteenth-Century Children's and Family Board and Card GamesMichelle Beissel Heath9. Gaming the Great Exhibition of 1851: Children's Board Games, Display, and Imperial PowerMegan A. Norcia10. Teetotum Lives: Mediating Globalization in the Nineteenth-Century Board GameSiobhan CarrollSection IV: Books, Boards, and Other Objects11. What Did They Play, and What Does This Say?: A Quantitative and Cultural Analysis of British Collected Games in the Nineteenth Century through the Games Research DatabaseMaurice Suckling12. Professor Hoffmann's Victorian Puzzles and Stage MagicAndrew Rhoda13. "An Endless Round of Delights": Materializing the Toy TheatreJennie MacDonald14. The Game of Authors, 1861-1900: A Case HistoryMaura IvesContributorsGeneral IndexGames Index