Love Game
A History of Tennis, from Victorian Pastime to Global Phenomenon
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents

Contents
1 The game of love
PART ONE: A LEISURED CLASS
2 Healthy excitement and scientific play
3 Real tennis and the scoring system
4 The growth of a sporting culture
5 On the Riviera
6 What’s wrong with women?
7 A match out of Henry James
8 The lonely American
9 The Four Musketeers
10 Working-class heroes
11 Tennis in Weimar – and after
12 As a man grows older
13 Three women
PART TWO: THIS SPORTING LIFE
14 Home from the war
15 Gorgeous girls
16 Opening play
17 Those also excluded
18 Tennis meets feminism
PART THREE: THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT
19 Bad behaviour
20 Corporate tennis
21 Women’s power
22 Vorsprung durch Technik
23 Celebrity stars
24 Millennium tennis
25 The rhetoric of sport
26 Back to the future
Bibliography
References
Acknowledgements
Photo credits
Index
PART ONE: A LEISURED CLASS
2 Healthy excitement and scientific play
3 Real tennis and the scoring system
4 The growth of a sporting culture
5 On the Riviera
6 What’s wrong with women?
7 A match out of Henry James
8 The lonely American
9 The Four Musketeers
10 Working-class heroes
11 Tennis in Weimar – and after
12 As a man grows older
13 Three women
PART TWO: THIS SPORTING LIFE
14 Home from the war
15 Gorgeous girls
16 Opening play
17 Those also excluded
18 Tennis meets feminism
PART THREE: THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT
19 Bad behaviour
20 Corporate tennis
21 Women’s power
22 Vorsprung durch Technik
23 Celebrity stars
24 Millennium tennis
25 The rhetoric of sport
26 Back to the future
Bibliography
References
Acknowledgements
Photo credits
Index
Review Quotes
New York Times
“Weaves a wandering, eccentric path through the century and a half since modern tennis’s founding as a boxed game called Sphairistike. . . . Wilson drop-shots mini-essays on broader intellectual topics.”
Literary Review
“A richly textured history distilled through an illuminating private passion.”
Observer
“A sporting history unlike any I've read—one that, in its sophistication and thoughtfulness, shows up the hollowness of most other accounts.”
Saga
“A love-all letter to the beautiful, sweaty, glorious, grunting game.”
Jane Leavy | Wall Street Journal
“Ms. Wilson’s is an original and provocative mind at work.”
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