Based extensively on interviews, examines the voluntary or involuntary leisure time of the working-class in adjacent English industrial cities. Emphasizes the different experiences of men and women, and the distinct youth culture. Distributed by Taylor and Francis. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This is a major new history of the dramatic and enduring changes in the daily lives of poor European women and men in the nineteenth century. Rachel G. Fuchs conveys the extraordinary difficulties facing the destitute from England to Russia, paying particular attention to the texture of women's everyday lives. She shows their strength as they attempted to structure a life and set of relationships within a social order, culture, community, and the law. Within a climate of calamities, the poor relied on their own resourcefulness and community connections where the boundaries between the private and public were indistinguishable, and on a system of exchange and reciprocity to help them fashion their culture of expediencies. This accessible synthesis introduces readers to conflicting interpretations of major historic developments and evaluates those interpretations. It will be essential reading for students of women's and gender studies, urban history and social and family history.

This study examines the complex relationship between women and leisure, drawing upon recent feminist theory. The text charts the changes in perception, representation and experiences of leisure for women between 1920 and 1960, and relates the changes to life cycle lines.

This text draws upon recent feminist theoretical interventions to suggest a framework for the history of women's leisure which explicitly problematises the category leisure and foregrounds its relationship to work within women's lives.

Drawing on a wealth of new research data, this text systematically examines the key contexts within which leisure and gender relate, including leisure policy, issues of participation and the management and organisation of leisure.

This work examines how gender inequalities impact on men's, women's and children's experiences of poverty and demonstrates the importance of integrating gender analysis into every aspect of development initiatives.