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Collectors and Collecting

Who were the first major Cricket Collectors? In ‘Collectors and Collecting’ the fifth monograph in the James D. Coldham Series my father sets about methodically, doggedly and informatively answering this question. He and his father were inveterate collectors of cricket books, periodicals and cricketana all their lives. Even while my father was serving in Burma during WWII my grandfather was religiously searching antiquarian book shops for old – and fire damaged – cricket books and saving up wartime prints of ‘The Cricketer’ for my father’s return to England. ‘Collectors and Collecting’ reflects my father’s lifelong interest and seeks to examine both the phenomena of ‘collecting’ and to trace its development from Georgian times to the modern era. He counted himself as a cricket lover and historian, a writer also, but the foundation of it all was his cricket library. Written by a man who considered his participation in the compilation and the publication of the ‘Bibliography of Cricket’ in the 1980s as a crowning achievement in his career, he poured his expertise and lifetime’s knowledge into the four articles which comprise the main substance of this monograph. I have also ‘packaged’ my father’s review of ‘Cricket Books Published Since 1945’, first published in 1970, under the umbrella of ‘Collectors and Collecting’, knowing it will strike a chord with any true ‘collector’! In publishing ‘Collectors and Collecting’ I am doing what my father would have done had he lived in our marvellously inter-connected age – making this material available to the widest possible audience. It is the editor’s hope that the publication of ‘Collectors and Collecting’ will be of assistance to researchers and fellow cricketana aficionados everywhere. Purchasers of the paperback version of this monograph will be able to download the e-book for free.Read more

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