[Z] Drummond (Henry) Baxter's Second Innings

Drummond (Henry) Baxter's Second Innings. Specially Reported for the School Eleven, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1892, tall small 8vo, first edition, stitched sueded 'cricket pad' binding, top edge gilt; with four further editions of the same work with striped cloth boards and applied HD monogram badge including first edition 1892 in light blue stripe; a further similar edition with pasted 'silk' diagonal banner 'Baxter's Second Innings'; three further volumes in green cloth gilt, another in blue cloth gilt and three others (13)

Later editions of the work, of which there were many, were published with the author’s full name. Henry Drummond was a Scottish evangelist and academic who was very highly-regarded in his own lifetime – in 1893 he delivered the Lowell Lectures in Boston – but he has subsequently passed into comparative obscurity. The present work is a religious polemic in the form of a cricketing story. This moral tale first appeared as the Boy's Brigade Christmas Book for 1891 with mass-market publication by Hodder and Stoughton in the UK and James Pott in America. It went through many editions, with those up to the 11th edition being in the same format as the first. From the 12th edition of 1906, the format changed to a smaller paperback size and an unnumbered and undated edition by Collins Clear Type Press in the 1930s. The final book edition was published in the 1950s, when the Boys' Brigade produced an edition with a foreword by Len Hutton, the publication subsidised by an Old Boys' Brigade man who had made good. There are over 24 editions, including three American and a Norwegian translation. The early editions were produced in many variant bindings of which many are represented in this lot.