This is the second edition of the highly acclaimed and bestselling comprehensive history of tennis which was the first truly scholarly history of any individual sport. Supported by a startling wealth of linguistic and documentary research, Gillmeister charts the global evolution of tennis from its origins in 12th century France where it emerged as a more peaceful variety of ribald football played in monasteries. By the 16th century, it had become the favourite pastime of the European aristocracy and had, in the wake of the Spanish conquistadors, even reached the Americas. The prestige of the game also led to its popularity among Renaissance poets and playwrights. After a gradual decline in the 18th and 19th centuries the medieval game revived in the 1870s in the form of lawn tennis. The new game dispensed with the expensive walled courts, discarded the complicated rules of the old game and was played in a natural setting. From England with its famous Wimbledon tournament it spread to the European continent and to the United States where the Davis Cup was born.Gillmeister debunks several firmly established myths about the history of the game and rare colour photographs and medieval and renaissance drawings generously adorn the text.
A delight for the sports fan and the scholar alike, Tennis is the authoritative text on the sport.
Auflage
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Editions-Typ
Illustrationen
158 black and white figures and 19 colour plates
Maße
Höhe: 244 mm
Breite: 170 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-78179-520-0 (9781781795200)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Heiner Gillmeister is a retired Chaucerian and linguistics scholar at the University of Bonn and is a world authority on the history of ball games. He taught sports history at the German Sports University, Cologne, and his theory that Association Football has its roots in Renaissance Italy and that golf and even cricket originated on the European continent created an international stir. He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Oxford English Dictionary and to leading German newspapers such as Die Welt and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
From the Preface to the First Edition Preface to the Second Edition 1. The Origins of Tennis: The Monks' Racket 2. The Tennis Games of the Middle Ages 3. The Language of Tennis 4. Tennis in Renaissance Literature 5. Tennis in the German Ballhouse 6. Lawn Tennis: The Sturdy Bastard 7. Lawn Tennis in America 8. Continental Colonies: Lawn Tennis in France 9. Lawn Tennis under the Kaiser
