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FREDERICK LILLYWHITE

The English Cricketers' Trip to Canada and the United States. London: F. Lillywhite, 1860. 8vo (180 x 118mm). 79p. including rear ads. Wood-engraved frontispiece, additional title and 22 plates, folding map. (Title and preliminaries, and final advertisement leaf, detached, title slightly torn at inner margin, caption to map cropped away.) Original green ribbed cloth, upper cover lettered in gilt (extremities worn, splits to block). Provenance: J.W. Rimmington Wilson (signature on front pastedown) -- Julien Cahn (librarian's note).

FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST TOUR BOOK. George Parr's team visited Canada and the United States in 1859. Fred Lillywhite, who accompanied them with his score-tent, describes both the discomforts and the rewards of the long journey. But for the intervention of the American Civil War (which broke out in 1861), other tours might have followed and 'our natural opponents at cricket would have been not Australia but the U.S.A. and possibly Canada' (R. Bowen, Cricket: A History, 1970, p. 97). Allen 78; Padwick 4893.

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