British Sports and Sportsmen, Past and Present -

Circa 1913 - British Sports and Sportsmen, London - First Edition. Royal Edition, limited to 250 copies, of which this set is number 105.
Two large finely bound folios containing the biographies of 303 of leading British sportsmen from the eighteenth and (primarily) nineteenth centuries, practitioners of the hunt, polo, steeplechase, cricket, rugby, boxing, and other gentlemanly pursuits accompanied by approximately 300 full page photogravure portrait plates. With a fascinating introduction by Horace G. Hutchinson. Volume I covers Hugo Meynell 1735-1808 to The Hon. Egremont Lascelles 1825-1892; Volume II covers George Parr 1826-1891 to Henry Arthur, Viscount Chelsea 1868-1908.

Compiled and Edited by ‘
The Sportsman’. Two large folio volumes [39x29cm] . Profusely illustrated.  
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Price HK$ 8,000



Laws of Cricket Illustrated - Charles Chas Crombie (illustrator)

1907 - Kegan Paul, London - First Edition
A superb large folio (38.5 x 27.5 cm) of Crombie’s well known ‘Laws of Cricket’ containing twelve magnificent colour plates of humorous interpretations of the MCC laws. The last plate demonstrating the recently amended rule 13, with the Umpire calling ‘Over’ after six balls (prior to 1900 an ‘Over’ consisted of five balls).

Crombie was commissioned to produce these for ‘Perrier’ ‘The Champagne of Table Waters’, and the work includes Perrier’s additional full page colour advertisement at the rear, and smaller colour Perrier advertisements to the verso of each of Crombie’s illustrations, the latter only present in the first edition.
 
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Price HK$ 15,000



A Fan's Notes - Inscribed - Frederick Exley

1968 - Harper &, New York - First Edition
Inscribed ‘Read in good “mental health”’ by Exley to renowned New York professor and psychologist and psychoanalyst Avrum Ben-Avi, and then gifted by a Sarah P. I. to ABA ‘for helping me end my “journey on a davenport”’ which refers to Exley’s six months on the sofa at his mother’s house at the end of which he was consigned to a mental hospital.

Exley's cult classic, a fictional memoir based on the author's real struggle, complicated by alcohol abuse and mental illness, to avoid being a lifelong "loser." Son of a fabled high school athlete in Watertown, NY, but with no interest in athletics in a sports-rabid town, Exley's only joy was in watching, through an alcoholic haze, the NY Giants on television on Sunday afternoons at a local bar. A Giants' victory would seem to justify, for a few hours, his misshapen life. In between football games, drinking bouts, shock treatments and insulin therapy, Exley would venture out into the world to play at being a normal, successful, young man on-the-go only to find each attempt driving him toward insanity again bringing him to the conclusion he is not a hero but merely a fan.
 
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Price HK$ 4,500



With Bat and Ball - George Giffen

1898 - Ward, London - First Edition
A fine first edition of George Giffen’s cricketing memoirs.

Giffen (1859-1927) was considered the greatest Australian all-rounder of his day, he played his first Test in 1881 when only 22 years old and went on to appear in 31, a huge amount for his era. In matches between Australia and England he made 1,238 runs, and took 103 wickets. He is also the first Australian to take 1,000 first-class wickets and score 10,000 runs.
 
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Price HK$ 2,500



Cricketing Reminiscences and Personal Recollections - W. G. Grace

1899 - James Bowden, London - First Edition
I should like to say that good batsmen are born, not made; but my long experience comes up before me, and tells me that it is not so.’

Profusely illustrations, with over eighty mostly photographic plates including one of the great beard himself, the first man ever to score 1,000 runs in one month, and this at the age of 46.

Grace was still playing Test cricket into his 50s, and on his 58th birthday, after scoring 74, he laid his bat down on the pavilion table and declared, ‘There. I shan’t play any more’.
 
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Price HK$ 2,000



The Natural - Bernard Malamud

1952 - Harcourt, New York - First Edition
First edition of Bernard Malamud’s first novel, widely considered as one of the greatest baseball narratives of all time, the basis for the acclaimed 1984 film of the same name directed by Barry Levinson, and starring Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall and Kim Basinger.

‘This book established that we could have a serious adult baseball novel by playing with the parallels between mythical elements in the game and mythical elements in literature’. –
Chicago Tribune.

‘A brilliant and unusually fine novel.’ –
The New York Times. 
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Price HK$ 16,000



Annals of Cricket - W. W. Read

1896 - Sampson Low, London - First Edition - One of 250 copies
A classic account of the early history of the game and autobiography of the Surrey batsman (who scored 338 against Oxford University in 1888) and who played in 18 Tests for England.

Illustrated with portrait frontispiece and 25 black and white plates.
 
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Price HK$ 2,800



The Cricket Bat and How to Use It. - Nicholas Wanostrocht Felix An Old Cricketer

1863 - Houlston and Wright, London - First Edition, Second Issue
A pretty example of this early and important work by the great ‘Felix’, rare in the original gilt cloth boards.

In the words of the famous elegy, best loved of Bernard Darwin:-

And with five such mighty cricketers 'twas but natural to win
As Felix, Wenman, Hillyer, Fuller Pilch and Alfred Mynn.

Nicholas ‘Felix’ Wanostrocht (1804-76) was a noted English amateur (’Gentleman’) cricketer, a classical scholar, musician, linguist, inventor, writer and artist. When his father died in 1824 he had inherited the running of his school, aged only nineteen, and he was afraid that the parents of pupils might think that cricket was too frivolous a pastime for a schoolmaster, so he played under the name of ‘Felix’. A specialist left-handed batsman, though he did occasionally bowl underarm slow left-arm orthodox, Felix was a mainstay of the great Kent team of the mid-19th century alongside such players as Alfred Mynn, Fuller Pilch, William Hillyer and Ned Wenman.
 
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Price HK$ 4,000