Founders of Lawn Tennis

A particularly interesting description of the development of lawn tennis through to 1877 and the first Championships at the All England Club, Wimbledon. This by George Alexander in his 1974 book ‘Lawn Tennis, Its Founders & Its Early Days’.

The second paragraph is of particular interest dealing as it does with the merits of Gem and Perera. This is the fairest acknowledgement of Gem and Perera’s standing in the pantheon of the game.

Note: Perera is misspelled in the second paragraph on page 29 (Pereira is the Portuguese spelling). On page 31 Alexander quotes A.E. Crawley who wrote of a ‘Major G. Perera’ clearly a conflation of Gem and Perera’s names.