Catalogue for the auction of
Wisden Cricketers’ Almanacks
and Cricket Books
Held on Saturday & Sunday
14th & 15th September 2024
Lot 609
Estimate: £8000/12000
Hammer: £13000
‘Cricket. An Heroic Poem Illustrated with the critical observations of Scriblerus Maximus’. James Love [Dance]. Published by W. Bickerton 1744. First edition. 25pp. Woodcut title vignette. Bound in blue morocco leather with beautifully gilt title lettering in the inner compartment of a double panel, gilt to all edges, front board very slightly bowed. The very rare first edition of the first separately published poem on cricket. James Dance (1722-1774) who assumed the name of Love as a compliment to his wife. The mock heroic couplets describe the match between Kent and England played on the Artillery Ground on the 2nd June 1744. Padwick 6445. The title page and final leaf with professional laminated repairs otherwise in good condition. One of the rarest cricket books
Previously sold as part of the E.D. R. Eagar Collection by Christie’s in their Eagar sale of April 2005 as lot 28 where it achieved a price of £19,200 (including buyers premium). Only 4/5 copies of the first edition are known to exist, one at Lord’s, one at Trinity College, Cambridge