The Story of a Cricket Playbill

Martin Chandler | 9:31am GMT 11 February 2024

Published: 1968
Pages: 4
Author: Rosenwater, Irving
Publisher: Private
Rating: 2.5 stars

I cannot claim that the subject matter of this one, Rosenwater’s second limited edition, ever really appealed to me so much so that, although I did pay a not inconsiderable sum of money when I bought a copy first time round, I don’t recall ever actually reading it.

That has all been remedied now, and a few minutes of my time were spent reading the entirety of this modest little story, which runs to just three pages of narrative and a fourth reproducing the playbill in question.

Being an announcement of the forthcoming entertainment in a Leeds theatre in June of 1780 there is just one passing reference to cricket, that being in the context of one of the promised entertainments being A New Dance Call’d The Cricketers.

What this new dance was we don’t know, and the monograph concerns not that but rather the great lengths that Rosenwater went to to try and track down the original playbill, an artefact that at one time had reposed in the collection of FS Ashley-Cooper. That one Rosenwater never did locate, although eventually he did track one down to the British Museum.

The account of Rosenwater’s diligence in his research is an illuminating one and speaks volumes for the man, but that apart this is one that is strictly for completists only. There are 25 copies of The Story of a Cricket Playbill, all of which Rosenwater gave to his friends.