Download PDF by Robert J. Lake: A Social History of Tennis in Britain (Routledge Research in

Winner of the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize 2015- from the British Society for activities History.

From its creation within the mid-late 19th century as a garden-party hobby to its improvement right into a hugely commercialised and professionalised high-performance activity, the background of tennis in Britain displays vital subject matters in Britain’s social historical past. within the first finished and important account of the heritage of tennis in Britain, Robert Lake explains how the game’s ancient roots have formed its modern constitution, and the way the historical past of tennis can let us know a lot in regards to the heritage of wider British society.

Since its emergence as a spare-time diversion for landed elites, the dominant tradition in British tennis has been considered one of amateurism and exclusion, with tennis sitting along cricket and golfing as a car for the copy of middle-class values all through wider British society within the 20th and twenty-first centuries. as a result, the garden Tennis organization has been accused of a failure to advertise inclusion or widen participation, regardless of steadfast efforts to improve expertise and enhance training practices and constructions. Robert Lake examines those topics within the context of the worldwide improvement of tennis and critical techniques of commercialisation and social improvement that experience formed either tennis and wider society.

The social background of tennis in Britain is a microcosm of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century British social background: sustained type strength and sophistication clash; struggles for girl emancipation and racial integration; the decline of empire; and, Britain’s moving dating with the United States, continental Europe, and Commonwealth international locations. This ebook is necessary and interesting analyzing for anyone with an curiosity within the background of game or British social history.