Of Books and Bookishness

Martin Chandler | 8:18am BST 12 May 2024

Published: 1998
Pages: 5
Author: Rosenwater, Irving
Publisher: Private
Rating: 4 stars

It is a splendid title, and any cricket book collector will not be disappointed if he has the opportunity to read this illuminating essay on the history of our shared passion. If he wants to do so in Rosenwater’s own edition it will be  an expensive exercise as the man himself ran off just ten copies, but the acquisition of one of the ten is not a pre-requisite to reading the article, as it also appeared in the Spring 1998 issue of the Cricket Society Journal.

At the beginning of the essay there are a few interesting facts and figures about book publishing generally, and a selection of splendid quotes illustrating the importance of books that will strike a chord with any bibliophile. In the main however Of Books and Bookishness is concerned with the history of the market for cricket literature as well as a few of the early collectors, and indeed the dealers who supplied them.

At the time Rosenwater wrote this essay the second hand book trade, for cricketing items in particular, was thriving and would do so for another decade. Since then the financial crisis of 2008 delivered a knock, and the increasing dominance of the internet as a resource for information has left its mark. Rosenwater was not oblivious to technology, being rightly dismissive of any threat posed by what he described as ‘CD-ROMs’, and he had no way of foreseeing what followed the crash of 2008, but it would be interesting to know what he would have made of the current state of what is a very different marketplace to the one he knew.