Literature and Sports History: A Review of Recent Contributions

Abstract

From first paragraph: During the 2008 European Championships the British newspaper the Observer offered the highly renowned author novelist A.S. Byatt the opportunity to write an essay about football. Being a female and a ‘highbrow’ writer (she has won the Booker Prize), the editor may well have imagined something original and controversial. It was indeed a surprise to me that Byatt had a passion for the sport, so I paid the essay more attention than I would a run-of-the-mill sports feature article in a newspaper. By the end of the essay I had almost come to the conclusion that sport and literature are and should remain two distinct worlds that should leave each other in peace. The essay was not only pretentious but, in my mind at least, significantly at odds with the populist experience of playing and watching football.