Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

34 The Template; The Fifth Form At St Dominic’s 1880-81 with The Adventures of the Three Guinea Watch , in seventeen instalments and this time with Randlebury the chosen school. Its success led to calls for an even more ambitious book – and St Dominic’s was founded for and in the imagination of this youthful audience. It was composed of 38 episodes and was serialised during 1881 and 1882. It was first produced in book form in 1887 – with a boy holding a cricket bat on the front cover. More of Domincs and cricket anon but what is impressive is that, as well as his stand-out novel, Tibby Reed, unlike Thomas Hughes, who never saw himself primarily as a writer, sustained his output and created a genre. Although Dominic’s lived longest and had enormous impact for the many authors who copied him, often slavishly, his overall record was in itself a significant part of his heritage. In 1883- 84 appeared The Willoughby Captains , thought by some of the cognoscenti to be an offering superior to the more famed Dominic’s novel; The Master of the Shell followed in 1887- 89; ten years later in 1899 he published The Cock- House of Fellsgarth , and in 1892-93, just before his untimely death, there appeared Tom, Dick and Harry . In 1882-83 he serialised the tale My Friend Smith which was set in a small special school for difficult and backward boys. Although it shone an approving light on Reed’s social conscience, it sank without trace. It proved unpopular. His thousands of readers, few of them at or preparing to go to the sort of fee-paying boarding schools portrayed, much preferred the sporting and other adventures of ordinary carefree boys with whom they would like to identify. Cricket played a part of most of his stories and his young readers found comfort and perhaps inspiration more in the green sward of the public school cricketer than in the behavioural and other problems of what now would be termed those ‘in special needs’. ‘Dominics’ remained in print constantly until 1948 and then had further editions in 1951 and 1971 , proving its worth over just short of a hundred years, a remarkable achievement. In his preface to the first edition, GA Hutchinson, editor of