Jeu de Paume, lawn tennis and France’s national identity from the 1870s to the Musketeers era

Although the history of sport has become an important field in contemporary French history, the development of lawn tennis in France is more or less terra incognita. Only certain eras have received in-depth scholarly attention, including the beginnings of lawn tennis in France (Gillmeister 2017; Peter & Tétart 2003), the inter-war dominance of Suzanne Lenglen and of France’s “Musketeers”, and tennis’ decline in the 1990s (Waser 1995).