Muscle And Manliness

"Axel Bundgaard had produced a meaningful work on the important but little-told history of interschool athletics, exploring the introduction and nature of sport in the controlled environment of the American boarding school."

"Using archival material from several eastern boarding schools founded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Bundgaard traces this process from its beginnings in the muscular Christianity prevailing in the boarding schools of Victorian England - most notably Rugby. There, athletics and the prefect system - older boys shaping the manners and morals of younger ones - were used to mold youth into "Christian gentleman," and it was believed that the roots of future military victories were planted on the school playing fields. Bundgaard shows how this model of sport and character building was gradually absorbed into the classical curricula of private education in America.

He then goes on to chronicle the dramatic changes in this model through the first decade of the twentieth century, as school governing philosophies evolved and an ideal of physical vigor and "conduct befitting a gentleman" emerged."

"Drawing on archival sources at Groton, Phillips Andover, Phillips Exeter, St. Paul's Suffield, Williston, Woodberry Forest, and Worcester Academy to name a few - interviews, personal communications, school newspapers, and histories of various institutions - Bundgaard provides a new critical perspective on the evolution of play and sports for schoolboys. This book will stimulate research on the broader subject of American secondary school athletics and pique the interest of sport historians, educators, and a general audience."--Jacket.