Title: Real Tennis in Geneva
Subtitle: From Faguillon to Pictet
Description: This is the story of a real tennis court in Geneva, built in Rue Chevelu (now Rue J-J Rousseau) by Renaud Faguillon in 1654 and revived by Marc-Auguste Pictet in 1816. It was demolished around 1850, as the other two tennis courts had been previously. The heyday of the court was the second decade of the nineteenth century, when Henri Delahaye was paumier (professional). In the summer of 1816 visitors to Geneva from England included Lord Byron, John Polidori, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Cam Hobhouse and Scrope Berdmore Davies; the latter two visited the court. The original building contract has been transcribed by Gaétan Carlier and interpretative architectural drawings done by Allan Willingham. An oration on tennis and a set of instructions for the game, both written by M-A Pictet, are included. All these documents have been translated from French into English by Richard Travers. There is a section on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his ideas on real tennis and shuttlecock, and a section describing the two types of real tennis court (the jeu quarré and the jeu à dedans). Lastly, there is a biography of Pictet reprinted from The Edinburgh Journal of Science in 1826, with extra annotations.