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    Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar
    Unavailable
    Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar
    Unavailable
    Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar
    Ebook363 pages4 hours

    Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar

    By Sasha Abramsky

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A groundbreaking biography of the world's first female sports superstar, the pioneering and uncompromising Lottie Dod

    "Eighty-five years before Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs fought the ‘battle of the sexes,’ a Victorian teenager showed what women could do . . . [Abramsky] celebrates her as a brave and talented and determined original. In sports, the battle of the sexes is far from over, but Dod won more than a few break points simply by living her own life to the fullest."
    --The Atlantic

    "Abramsky's reclamation of [Dod's] story is a welcome addition that reminds us that women have long struggled for an equitable place in sports and that women athletes do have predecessors to look toward for encouragement in their contemporary fights for pay equity, TV coverage and respect."
    --Ms. Magazine

    "Before Serena Williams and Megan Rapinoe, there was Lottie Dod...Abramsky presents a well-researched account of a woman whose rare losses were almost more newsworthy than her consistent victories."
    --Christian Science Monitor

    "An adroitly written biography...Abramsky offers a fascinating portrait of the life of this forgotten sports heroine in fluid prose. Little Wonder is a worthy addition to the sports literature."
    --New York Journal of Books

    "Abramsky...masterfully captures the life of this little-known sportswoman, a versatile female athlete comparable to Babe Didrikson Zaharias. In an eloquently written narrative, spiced with vivid descriptions of the Victorian era and the early twentieth century, he shines a light on Dod...This fine biography makes a significant contribution to sports history and women's studies and should go a long way to bringing Dod's inspirational story to a new audience."
    --Booklist, Starred review

    "Abramsky combines descriptive writing with research that pulls back the curtain to reveal an athlete whose feats remain stunning 60 years after her death and more than a century after her glory days."
    --New Books in History (podcast)

    Lottie Dod was a truly extraordinary sports figure who blazed trails of glory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dod won Wimbledon five times, and did so for the first time in 1887, at the ludicrously young age of fifteen. After she grew bored with competitive tennis, she moved on to and excelled in myriad other sports: she became a leading ice skater and tobogganist, a mountaineer, an endurance bicyclist, a hockey player, a British ladies' golf champion, and an Olympic silver medalist in archery.

    In her time, Dod had a huge following, but her years of distinction occurred just before the rise of broadcast media. By the outset of World War I, she was largely a forgotten figure; she died alone and without fanfare in 1960.

    Little Wonder brings this remarkable woman's story to life, contextualizing it against a backdrop of rapid social change and tectonic shifts in the status of women in society. Dod was born into a world in which even upper-class women such as herself could not vote, were restricted in owning property, and were assumed to be fragile and delicate.

    Women of Lottie Dod's class were expected not to work and to definitely get married. Dod never married and never had children, instead putting heart and soul into training to be the best athlete she could possibly be. Paving the way for the likes of Billie Jean King, Serena Williams, and other top female athletes of today, Dod accepted no limits, no glass ceilings, and always refused to compromise.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEdge of Sports
    Release dateAug 4, 2020
    ISBN9781617758263
    Unavailable
    Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar

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    Reviews for Little Wonder

    4/5

    22 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      An entertaining biography of an amazing woman. Admittedly, the author was hampered by numerous gaps in information which he compensated for by detailed descriptions of people and places as well as guesses as to the reasons for certain actions. Those descriptions did, however, help provide a picture of the times.
    • 4/5
      I lent this book to a tennis-loving friend and he enjoyed it quite a bit. However, he only recently returned it to me... unfortunately it has taken some time for me to read & review. What a different time it was when Lottie lived -- and what a talented and fascinating woman she was! What I like most about the book was how it provided an unusual glimpse into the life of a woman who was born, grew up and came of age during Victorian & Edwardian times.
    • 4/5
      Lottie Dod was a superstar, in just about anything she tried, but she is most well known for her prowess in tennis. A great look at her privileged life and at society back then. And what it was like to be a woman.
    • 3/5
      In 1887 15 year-old Charlotte Dods won the Wimbledon title at her first attempt. Over the next ten years she won the title four more times. After ‘retiring’ she went on to be a pioneering mountaineer, accomplished ice skater, pioneer cyclist, national golf champion, Olympic archer, and at one point was the “fastest woman on earth” after a record breaking toboggan run down the cresta run. Yet she died unknown and alone in a 1960s nursing home. Abramsky does a great job of uncovering the story of this remarkable woman. However he may be a little too enamored of his subject front loading the book with mentions of her accomplishments and life rather than letting it unfold through the narrative. In fact there’s so much in the introduction that it almost renders the rest of the text superfluous.
    • 4/5
      It is wonderful to have a book about this extraordinary athlete, particularly in the high Victorian era. She was amazing. Babe Didrickson is the closest person we American would know.I was astounded by the nine pages of acknowledgements that seemed like self-aggrandizement but it was interesting. His writing style was a little tricky; I tripped over some of the wording but it was ok. Glad to see all the notes but wished there was an appendix of all the contests in which she participated.
    • 4/5
      A) Doing anything, particularly highly active things, in victorian ladies' dress is remarkable. 2) Holy shit, what an impressive list of life activities - most professional level competition: repeat Wimbledon (tennis) champion, olympic silver medalist in archery, British golf champion, endurance bicyclist, field hockey player, mountaineer, tobogganist!!, ice skater, WWI hospital volunteer, madrigal singer. III) Winning exhibitions against her male contemporaries, founding a women's field hockey club, exercising her right to vote with the first generation of british women able to do so. …._) Dude, how fucking delightful would it be to not have to make money and have the means to fully explore your passions and talents? #drunkreview
    • 4/5
      What a fascinating women! Lottie's story is one that spans a period of great change in the world and as a person on the forefront of the rise of professional sports, she stands at the center of much of that change. Even though I don't consider myself a sport's fan, I was deeply interested in the variety of directions that Lottie took her sporting abilities. The only thing I would mark as a hindrance on the book is that some of the contextual information (suffrage movement, WWI events, etc.) could have been a little better tied to Lottie's personal story. I hope that in the future more stories and information about Lottie's life comes to the forefront!