Victorian Sportswear: Tennis Fashions of the Late 19th Century
“As a nation we ought to welcome the healthy, hearty girl who can beat her brother in managing a tennis ball, in rowing a boat, and very often in managing a frisky horse.”
Ladies Home Journal, 1891.
The game of lawn tennis was invented in the 1860s by retired British army officer Major Walter Clopton Wingfield. He patented the game in 1874 and, within a few short years, lawn tennis had become one of the most popular sports for women in Victorian England. Ladies played it at society garden parties and at tennis clubs. By the mid-1880s, they were even competing at Wimbledon, leading the 1891 edition of the Wright & Ditson Officially Adopted Lawn Tennis Guide to declare that:
“Lawn tennis has done more to develop among girls a taste for outdoor sports than have all other exercises combined.”[…]Continue Reading
