Billie Jean King was a champion on and off the court

All In. By Billie Jean King. Knopf; 496 pages; $30. To be published in Britain by Viking in September; £20

AT THE AGE of 15, Billie Jean King anticipated the trajectory of her life in a school essay. A tennis prodigy, she thought she would soon make it to Wimbledon but lose in the quarter-finals. On the flight to London she would meet a heart-throb and fall in love. In time she would be happily married, “sitting with my four wonderful children” and grateful to have an education and a husband, “instead of turning out to be a tennis bum”.

Luckily for fans at the All England club, Ms King proved better at slicing backhands than at prophesy. Between 1961 and 1979 she won six Wimbledon singles titles and 14 in doubles in one of the 20th century’s great sporting careers. She never had children, and defended abortion rights with the example of her own terminated pregnancy. She did marry a man, but later emerged as a figurehead for gay rights.

In “All In”, a perceptive autobiography written with Johnette Howard and Maryanne Vollers, Ms King notes that her youthful prediction reflected the stifling boundaries that hemmed in American girls in the 1950s. Few women had careers; professional women’s sports barely existed. When she began winning tennis trophies, first near home in California...