Authors: Jonathan Rice and Andrew Renshaw
Published: 30 March 2011
Review: Unlike other sports, and indeed most fields of human endeavour, there are books aplenty about events and people who have had relatively little impact on the game of cricket. It is therefore a little surprising that it has taken almost 150 years for a book to be devoted to the game’s greatest institution, John Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanack, but with the publication of The Wisden Collector’s Guide that is something we at last have. As the title makes plain the book is aimed at those for whom acquisition of past copies of the Almanack is at best a hobby, and at worst an obsession. It consists of a biographical essay about Wisden himself and ends with a section devoted to bibliographical information and the acquisition of the Almanack. In between is a brief look at each of the 147 editions that had appeared up to 2010, as well as a glance at the 8 editions of the now defunct Australian edition that appeared between 1998 and 2005.
