WISDEN – Cricketers' Almanack for 1897, edited by Sydney H. Pardon. London: John Wisden and Co., 1897.

Publisher's presentation copy of the second edition in hardback, 34th in the series, in fine condition. Good coverage is given to the Australians in England, 1896 (the ninth tour), and Lilley, Richardson, Ranjitsinhji, Trumble and Gregory are the 'Five Cricketers of the Year'. Ranji’s aggregate score of 2,780 runs in the season breaks Grace’s record of 2,739 set in 1871.

When John Wisden died in 1884 in the flat above the Cranbourn Street shop, Wisden's manager, Henry Luff, bought Wisden's business from his estate. Under his watch, the Wisden sports company became both manufacturer and retailer, and he injected new blood into the almanack by placing its editorship in the hands of the Pardon brothers. Charles and Sydney Pardon utilised the great advances in Victorian technology to create the Cricket Reporting Agency which allowed journalists at matches to submit results via telegraphy. In turn, industrial-age volume printing of newspapers and their speedy distribution by a growing railway system allowed their reports to be accessed by a huge readership. Access to this information network allowed Wisden to grow with the times, and turned it into an institution.

Octavo (162 x 100mm). Mounted photographic plate with five portraits, lxxx, [2], 416 [418], [30]pp., with the additional unpaginated leaf in quire I (tiny marginal spot to leaves H1-2, otherwise a clean copy). Publisher's original hardback cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt, printed yellow wrappers used as endpapers (extremities faintly rubbed, tiny insignificant split at foot of front hinge). Provenance: Henry Luff (ink presentation inscription on blank margin of yellow printed wrapper used as front free endpaper) – very minor pencil mathematical notation in margin of p.268.

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