An Introduction to the Bibliophile’s Blog

When this blog opened for business the original intention was for a number of the pages of the existing review section to be moved into it. Unfortunately however no one on the review team raised this with anyone with any technical knowledge and, unfortunately, it would seem that sticking to our plan would be far from straightforward.

So, instead of that we have decided to write this introduction and provide links to the original pieces we feel should be in here, so that anyone who wishes to access the articles can do so.

The CW Book Review section first opened for business on Boxing Day 2005 with eleven reviews from The Mac, and his opinion piece on the subject of biographies. Shortly afterwards The Mac added a similar piece on a more general theme.

The majority of the existing reviews that are not, strictly, reviews are Martin’s six monthly overviews  of recent and forthcoming books. In future this will appear here. The first piece appeared in July 2009, and subsequently they have been kept up and appeared in December 2009, July 2010, December 2010, July 2011, December 2011, July 2012, January 2013, July 2013, January 2014, July 2014, January 2015, July 2015, January 2016, July 2016, January 2017, July 2017, January 2018, July 2018 and January 2019.

Another semi regular feature has been our look back at the previous year’s books in the context of our Book of the Year awards to which, latterly, a number of authors contributed. It is not something we have done every year, and there are no current plans for such a feature for last year, but articles appeared for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017. In 2010 we also did a Book of the Decade piece, the winner of which was David Frith’s Bodyline Autopsy. We are not sure who is responsible, but our piece on that one is referenced in and quoted from in the Wikipedia article on Frith.

In 2010 we had a look back, in four parts, at books on the Ashes – follow the links for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of the Ashes in Print. One day we might need to do a Part 5, but sadly not yet. In the future a look at tour books in relation to contests between England and South Africa is being prepared, and there may be other similar pieces.

In 2009 Martin proved an Introduction to Wisden. Bear in mind that this, as with all the articles linked here, has not been updated, although the comment should perhaps be added that, Martin’s recent small complaint apart, Bloomsbury have proved to be an entirely suitable custodian of the John Wisden imprint.

Another possible direction for the blog in the future is to look at individual authors, in a similar manner to the way Martin looked at Irving Rosenwater here.

One particular article where it is important to bear in mind that the link is to the original text is the Guide to the Dealers that we posted ten years ago. In truth the landscape has not much changed, so no immediate plans for a second edition, but certainly not all of the dealers mentioned are still with us and/or trading.

Something that will definitely follow in the future will be looks at the smaller independent cricket publishers, and future articles on the back catalogues of John McKenzie, Christopher Saunders, The Cricket Publishing Company, Boundary Books, Red Rose Books and Richard Walsh are already in the course of preparation, and there may well be others in the future.