Venus with Biceps: a Pictorial History of Muscular Women by David L. Chapman and Patricia Vertinsky is an invaluable collection of rare images of athletic women in the 19th and 20th centuries. Maria Popova at Brainpickings has written a fantastic review which you can read here.
One of the archival images in 'Venus with Biceps' (image source: Brainpickings.com)
P.S. Thanks to this, we have also discovered Brainpickings: definitely an online space we’ll be watching!
Categories: Mediated Matters, The Idle Ethnographer, Visual Sociology