Lives in Cricket No 21 - Walter Read

111 It was seriously trailed in Cricket and elsewhere, sold at 2/6 per copy with a de luxe edition at 10/6 on hand-made paper, numbered and signed. It contained thirty illustrations, including a portrait of the author. The book clearly proved popular. Within a year a 1/- ‘paperback’ edition had appeared. ..of cricket books just now there is apparently no ending which is hardly to be wondered at with the season at its height. Mr W W Read’s “Annals of Cricket” have reached a shilling edition, substantial proof of their popularity. 181 An earlier less substantial publication was Short Hints on Cricket, even shorter and less substantial than the title suggests. They occupy just eight small pages of what is little more than a pamphlet the main purpose of which is to act as a catalogue for the goods of W.H.Cook & Co Ltd, Cricket Bat Manufacturers of 297 Victoria Park Road. London NE (now E9). W.H. Cook was Managing Director, Read was Chairman and the remaining Directors were Dr W.G. Grace, A.N.Hornby, A.J.Webbe, Rt Hon Lord Hawke, J.Shuter and A.Wells, with one exception, distinguished first-class cricketers, and two exceptions, educated at Eton, Harrow or Winchester. Grace was not public school educated and Wells was neither public school educated, nor a first-class cricketer. He was, however, the father-in-law of the Chairman, a self-made man and by this time a 181 Cricket 8 July 1897 Annals of Cricket and Short Hints on Cricket Early cricket - as Read envisaged it might have been.