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

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

From its introduction within the mid-late 19th century as a garden-party hobby to its improvement right into a hugely commercialised and professionalised high-performance recreation, the historical past of tennis in Britain displays very important issues in Britain’s social background. within the first finished and important account of the background of tennis in Britain, Robert Lake explains how the game’s ancient roots have formed its modern constitution, and the way the heritage of tennis can let us know a lot in regards to the background 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 increase expertise and increase training practices and buildings. Robert Lake examines those subject matters within the context of the worldwide improvement of tennis and significant approaches of commercialisation and social improvement that experience formed either tennis and wider society.

The social heritage of tennis in Britain is a microcosm of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century British social historical past: sustained classification strength and sophistication clash; struggles for lady emancipation and racial integration; the decline of empire; and, Britain’s moving dating with the United States, continental Europe, and Commonwealth countries. This ebook is critical and interesting analyzing for anyone with an curiosity within the background of recreation or British social history.