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M. Hurst, A. Heywood (publishers).
The All England Cricket and Football Journal and Athletic Review [very early original photographs of English professional footballers and cricketers].
Publisher: M. Hurst; A. Heywood, Sheffield & London,
Date of Publication: 1877
Stock Code: 15283
A COMPLETE RUN of 29 issues in 3 volumes, bound as one. Quarto, pp., [2], 96; [2], 96; 40, plus photograph portrait of football and cricket players mounted to title-page of each issue, photographic frontispiece to volume 1 and 2 (so 31 photographs in total). Contemporary morocco-grain maroon cloth; edges sprinkled red; white end-papers. Cloth faded to spine and upper board; corners bumped and rubbed; a few nicks to head of upper board. Very occasional spotting, the Lilywhite portrait underdeveloped, but otherwise internally rather clean. A very good copy. The complete run of a very early and exceedingly rare cricket and football magazine, which includes match reports, articles, wood-engraved comics, advertisements for sporting paraphenalia, and portraits of famous sportsmen. The woodburytypes mounted to the title-page of each issue were also advertised for sale mounted as cards, and are examples of some of the earliest football and sporting cards. The portraits include A. N. ‘Monkey’ Hornby, who joined Blackburn Rovers in 1878; George Ulyett, who played in goal for Sheffield Wednesday in 1883-84; Alfred Shaw, who was both a cricketer and rugby footballer; the champion cyclist John Keen (then fastest man in the world), and cricketers such as W. G. Grace and James Lillywhite. The team portrait of the Sheffield Wednesday Football Club Cup Team shows the team just nine years after the club was founded in 1867, and includes James Lang, the Scottish player who was arguably the first professional footballer in England. Complete runs of this short-lived periodical with every woodburytype are exceptionally difficult to find (advertisements within the later volumes even acknowledge the scarcity of the publication). Jisc (the union catalogue of over 100 major libraries across the UK and Ireland) locates three copies of individual issues of the magazine only, and in 1906 A. D. Taylor wrote that "Vols. I and 2 can frequently be met with at bookstalls, but the odd five numbers [in the final vol.] are difficult to obtain, making the complete set somewhat valuable". £4500.00