The Victorians invented mass entertainment. As the nineteenth century’s growing industrialized class obtained the funds and the leisure time to pursue amusement activities, their every whim was pleased by entrepreneurs building new locations for popular amusement. Unlike their status as dour, buttoned-up prudes, the Victorians reveled in these recently produced ‘palaces of satisfaction’.

In this vivid, captivating book, Lee Jackson charts the rise of well-known institutions such as gin palaces, music halls, seaside resorts, and football clubs, as well as the more peculiar attractions of the pleasure garden and worldwide exposition, ranging from parachuting monkeys and human zoos to theme recreation area thrill rides. He explores how lively mass entertainment found dominate leisure time and the way the efforts of religious groups and secular improvers to curb ‘immorality’ in the pub, variety movie theater, and dance hall faltered in the face of commercial success.

The Victorians’ unbounded love of leisure created a nationally significant and influential economic force: the present day entertainment industry.