The Cricket Player’s Pocket Companion. Boston: Mayhew and Baker, 1859. 12° (137 x 91mm). 34pp. + advertisement leaf. Woodcut frontispiece, figures and diagrams. (Frontispiece and title slightly browned and stained.) Original limp cloth, front cover with gilt lettering and figure of a batsman (a little worn at corners and head of spine).

FIRST SEPARATE EDITION, [?]FIRST ISSUE, without the advertisement for Pycroft's Cricket Field. The text had first appeared one year earlier in the Manual of Cricket and Baseball (Boston: 1858). The second edition is devoted entirely to cricket, baseball also meriting separate publication as The Base-ball Player’s Pocket Companion. A true 'pocket' book, it is an important early successor to Paterson's Manual of Cricket, published in New York in 1847. Padwick 386-1.

Two Important Sporting Libraries

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