DE SELINCOURT, Hugh (1878-1951). The Game of the Season, London, 1931, 8vo, frontispiece, original pink buckram, dust-jacket. A FINE COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION of this collection of cricketing stories set in a fictional village based on Storrington.

DE SELINCOURT, Hugh (1878-1951).  The Game of the Season. London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1931. 8vo (185 x 125mm). Half title, frontispiece by Leslie Illingworth, title within single rule border with printer's device. Original pink buckram ruled and lettered in black, pictorial endpapers and dust-jacket by L. Illingworth with the price of 5/- on the backstrip (some faint staining to cloth covers, section of light browning to the endpapers, some very minor fraying to edges of the dust-jacket). A FINE COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION of this collection of six cricketing stories which comprise "The Game of the Season," "Tillingfold Play Wilminghurst", "How Our Village Beat the Australians," "Tillingfold v. Grinling Green," "His Last Game" and "Ours is the Real Cricket!" Most copies are bound in bright green, almost turquoise, buckram; it is not known whether the rarer copies in pink buckram, of which the present copy is an example, constitute an earlier or later issue of the first edition, or have no precedence. The fictional village of Tillingfold, which features in the stories, was based on Storrington, West Sussex, and the book bears the author's printed dedication, "The Storrington Cricketers. Here's to You!" The author lived in the village, and died in nearby Pulborough. A contemporary review of the book in Everyman stated, "Mr de Sélincourt knows his cricket. Even more, he knows his village. The combination of the two, with a dash of philosophy and a good sprinkling of humour, makes a salad no gourmet could resist. The book is a most authoritative, amusing and exciting addition to cricket literature." Padwick A Bibliography of Cricket 6108.