J A Mangan University of Strathclyde UK; Boria Majumdar University of Central Lancashire, UK; Roberta J Park University of Strathclyde UK.

• Introduction; One: Overview; I: The Female Animal: Medical and Biological Views of Women and Their Role in Nineteenth-century America; 2: The Feminist Physique: Physical Education and the Medicalization of Women's Education; 3: Sport, Gender and Society in a Transatlantic Victorian Perspective; Two: British Perspectives; 4: Play up! Play up! And Play the Game! Sport at the Late Victorian Girls' Public Schools; 5: Victorian Familism and the Formative Years of Female Sport; 6: The Making and Breaking of a Female Tradition: Women's Physical Education in England 1880–1980; Three: Commonwealth Perspectives; 7: 7‘One's Nerves and Courage are in Very Different Order out in New Zealand': Recreational and Sporting Opportunities for Women in a Remote Colonial Setting; 8: Moral and Manly: Girls and Games in the Prestigious Church Secondary Schools of Melbourne 1901–1914; 9: Physical Activity for Canadian Women, 1890–1930: Media Views; Four: American Perspectives; 10: ‘Good Wives' and ‘Gardeners', Spinners and ‘Fearless Riders’: Middle- and Upper-rank Women in the Early American Sporting Culture; 11: Body Shapes: The Role of the Medical Establishment in Informing Female Exercise and Physical Education in Nineteenth-Century North America; 12: The ‘Amazon' and the American ‘Lady': Sexual Fears of Women as Athletes