Designed for Play: Children’s Playgrounds and the Politics of Urban Space, 1840–2010, by Jon Winder, is the latest title published in the Society’s New Historical Perspectives book series.
Designed for Play offers an original and accessible contribution to modern British history, urban and environmental history, and histories and geographies of childhood. Its subject is the complex and revealing history of public provision for children’s play, from London’s Playground and Recreation Society, of the 1850s, to the present day.
Chapters cover the development of garden gymnasiums in the 1890s, the influence of Charles Wicksteed, increasing standardisation in the interwar period, the impact of progressive education, pioneering female designers and the adventure playground movement in the twentieth century, and more recent challenges to the playground’s status as a site of health, nature and safety.
The playground has seldom been explicitly endorsed by central government and as a result Designed for Play draws on the dispersed archives of philanthropic, municipal, commercial and voluntary actors to highlight the convoluted journey of the playground: from obscurity to popular ubiquity and back towards a place of somewhat aimless eccentricity in the twenty-first century.
To accompany publication of his book, on 11 July, Jon has written an introductory article for the Society’s blog.
Designed for Play is the 18th title in the Society’s New Historical Perspectives book series, published with University of London Press. All titles in the series, including Jon’s, are published free Open Access, as pdf download and Manifold online reading edition. Designed for Play is also available in a paperback print edition, priced £29.99.
New Historical Perspectives (NHP) is the Society’s book series for early career scholars (within ten years of their doctorate), commissioned and edited by the Royal Historical Society, in association with University of London Press and the Institute of Historical Research.
The series publishes monographs and edited collections by early career historians on all chronologies and histories, worldwide. Contracted authors receive mentoring from the editorial boar and an author workshop to develop their manuscript before its final submission.
All titles in the series are published in paperback print and open access (as pdf downloads and Manifold reading editions) with all costs covered by the Royal Historical Society and partners. Recent and forthcoming titles include:
- Anti-Communism in Britain During the Early Cold War A Very British Witch Hunt, by Matthew Gerth (2023)
- Gender, Emotions and Power, 1750–2020, edited by Hannah Parker and Josh Doble (2023)
- Designed for Play: Children’s Playgrounds and the Politics of Urban Space, 1840–2010, by Jon Winder (2024)
- Mapping the State. English Boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act, by Matthew Spychal (forthcoming, 2024)
- Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z, edited Maria Cannon and Laura Tisdall (forthcoming 2024)
For details and access of all titles in the series, please see here.
HEADER IMAGE: Sketch Suggestions of Improvised Equipment for Children’s Play by R.B. Gooch, National Playing Fields Association, 1956, London Metropolitan Archives, CLC/011/MS22287.