Women Drinking out in Britain Since the Early Twentieth Century

David W. Gutzke is Professor of Modern British History at Missouri State University

• Introduction1. From the boozer to the improved public house2. Women, war and drinking3. Selling women4. Bikinis, boots and booze5. The more things change, the more (some) things remain the same6. Drinking habits of their own7. Wooing women8. New money, new ideas, new women9. A youth subculture of drinking10. Yesterday’s reforms, today’s bingeing11. Folk devils and moral panics: youth and women across a century of censureConclusionIndex

Although some useful articles have been written about women drinking in public places, this book by historian David Gutzke is a welcome addition to the rather limited historiography. ... provides a good synthesis of a wide variety of sources, and Gutzke shows sensitivity for the inner workings of cultural processes. To scholars of either gender or food and drink history, the book should prove a very useful addition to the existing literature., Jon Verriet, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis 11/3 (2014): 194-196, 7 February 2015‘Women Drinking Out in Britain offers a carefully researched and for the most part convincingly argued account of how the alcohol industry has responded to women as customers. Gutzke’s efforts to address the post-war period, so far largely neglected by historians of women and alcohol, make it a particularly valuable and timely contribution, as does his attention to the striking similarities between drunkenness in Edwardian England and present-day patterns of ‘binge drinking’. He impressively crafts a background against which researchers can begin to bring in the voices, understandings and experiences of the women who have lived through and navigated some of the changes described.’Laura Fenton, University of Manchester, Women’s History Review, 2016‘Both for the context it provides for local research and for its detailed and readable account of a key area of social history, this book is warmly recommended.’Paul Jennings, Local Historian 47, No. 2, April 2017‘Riding a rising tide of recent research on women in alcohol history, David Gutzke’s Women Drinking Out provides an expansive, innovative and occasionally provocative overview of female public drinking (and the lack thereof) across the twentieth century. Exhaustively researched and passionately written, it attempts to both re-evaluate women’s role in pubs in the first half of the twentieth century and provide a historical perspective on female disillusionment with traditional drinking venues from the 1950s onwards.’Richard Robinson, University of Helsinki, Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Vol. 29, 2015