Catalogue for the auction of
Cricket, Football & Sporting Memorabilia
To be held on Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday
6th, 7th, 8th & 9th August 2026
Lot 1576
Estimate: £250/350
‘Cricket across the Sea, or, the Wanderings and Matches of the Gentlemen of Canada 1887 by two of the Vagrants’. D.W. Sanders & G.G.S. Lindsay. Toronto 1887. Very nicely bound in beige quarter leather, marbled boards, raised bands and leather gilt title label to spine, red page edges, lacking original wrappers. Includes the frontispiece photograph of the team (some fading) laid opposite the dedication page. Padwick 5744. Ex Anthony Woodhouse collection. Some breaking to front internal hinge, minor scuffing to board edges, internally in very good condition. A scarce tour book.
Padwick identifies the two Vagrants as Saunders and Smith. In fact there was no Smith on the tour and he appears to have confused him with G.G.S. [Smith] Lindsey. The Canadian Eleven were mostly drawn from the Toronto Cricket Club and all were born in Canada. After victories against All New York and the Gentlemen of Ireland, the Canadians lost to the Gentlemen of Scotland. In England they experienced mixed fortunes but returned home deeply impressed by the extent to which cricket was part of national life, so much so that the banners commemorating Queen Victoria’s Jubilee read ‘fifty not out’.