Health and Girlhood in Britain, 1874-1920

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Hilary Marland

   Pages 1-14

3. Unstable Adolescence: Medicine and the ‘Perils of Puberty’ in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain

   • Hilary Marland

   Pages 15-41

4. Reinventing the Victorian Girl: Health Advice for Girls in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

   • Hilary Marland

   Pages 42-85

5. Health, Exercise and the Emergence of the Modern Girl

   • Hilary Marland

   Pages 86-121

6. Girls, Education and the School as a Site of Health

   • Hilary Marland

   Pages 122-154

7. The Health of the Factory Girl

   • Hilary Marland

   Pages 155-188

8. Conclusion: Future Mothers of the Empire or a ‘Double Gain’?

   • Hilary Marland

   Pages 189-196

9. Back Matter

   Pages 197-270

   PDF

This first major study of girls' health in modern Britain explores how debates and advice on healthy girlhood shaped ideas about the lives of young women from the 1870s to the 1920s, as theories concerning the biological limitations of female adolescence were challenged and girls moved into new arenas in the workplace, sport and recreation.

• adolescence
• education
• exercise
• girls
• health
• medicine
• puberty
• school
• women

"Hilary Marland's latest book provides excellent evidence that it is time to return to the turn of the twentieth century with a fresh eye, particularly when it comes to the history of bodies, and especially women's and exercising bodies. Marland makes a convincing case that the decades around 1900 saw the creation of a new cultural category of girlhood, which was in large part defined by notions of health and vigour, of mind as well as body." - Vanessa Heggie, Social History of Medicine

"Health and Girlhood in Britain is a thoroughly researched, well-written contribution to an increasingly multidisciplinary scholarship. Depending on and adding to the histories of medicine, public health, education, women, and children, it adds new dimensions to the discussion of modernization." - Lucinda M. McCray, Journal of British Studies

• University of Warwick, UK

  Hilary Marland

Hilary Marland is Professor of History in the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Warwick, UK. She is author of Medicine and Society in Wakefield and Huddersfield, 1780-1870 and Dangerous Motherhood: Insanity and Childbirth in Victorian Britain.

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