[Ads-l] Antedating of "Lawn Tennis"

[Shapiro, Fred]

The OED's first citation for "lawn tennis" is dated 1874.  Michael Seibold's Ph.D. Thesis (University of Edinburgh, 2009), titled "European Tennis: A Comparative Analysis of Talent Identification and Development (TID)," prints on page 23 the cover page of Walter Clopton Wingfield's 1873 pamphlet "Sphairistike or Lawn Tennis."  Those title words appear on the cover.  Apparently Seibold reproduced
this image from H. Gillmeister's 1997 book "Tennis: A Cultural History."  I have not yet examined the Gillmeister book.

Fred Shapiro

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