Diana's Ball Sports

Book excerpt: Diana’s Ball Sports is one of 4 volumes in the Sports She Wrote series written by the first woman with her own weekly sports column in a major American newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, from 1898 to 1901. Her real name (which she never revealed in print) was Mary Lagen, a prolific writer and bicycling pioneer, who inaugurated her “Athletic Woman” column at the age of 46. This volume (115,000 words) features Diana’s reports on baseball, basketball, billiards, bowling, cricket, croquet, football, tennis, and her favorite sport, golf. More than 100 of the 152 articles in this volume are about golf, including coverage of the Women’s National Golf Tournament held in Philadelphia that was published on the sports page, apart from her regular column. Several of her articles describe the condition of women’s college sports in the late 19th century. Diana is an engaging writer with a keen observational eye and clever wordplay. The other three volumes presenting Diana's column are Diana's Outdoor Sports, Diana's Fitness Fashion & Beauty, and Diana's Anecdotes & Aphorisms. Additional ball sports are included in the following volumes: Ball Sports; Ella Black, The First Woman Baseball Correspondent; Helen Dauvray, The Actress Who Loved Baseball; and Adelia Brainerd, The Outdoor Woman of Harper’s Bazar. Sports She Wrote is a 31-volume time-capsule of primary documents written by more than 500 women in the 19th century.