W. G. Grace burst onto the cricket scene in the 1860s with spectacular force. He dominated the game until the end of the century, and influences it to this day. He was the world's first sporting superstar, rivalled as a public figure only by Gladstone and Queen Victoria herself. His staggering achievements as both batsman and bowler made him the greatest draw cricket had ever known. Though often depicted as an overgrown schoolboy, W. G. was extremely shrewd and ruthlessly exploited the power his immense popularity gave him. A notorious 'shamateur', he amassed great wealth through cricket, while remaining the standard-bearer for the Gentlemen against the Players for forty years. Researched in archives from Grimsby (where Grace once scored 400) to Australia, Simon Rae's new biography offers a radical analysis of Grace's career, and reviews the more controversial aspects of his conduct, including verbal and physical altercations, both on and off the field, and his kidnapping of an Australian cricketer from Lord's. But W. G. Grace: A Life provides more than a fresh look at the cricketer. It focuses on Grace's formative family background; his intensely competitive relations with his two famous brothers, 'E. M.' and Fred; his career as a doctor, and his ambitions and bereavements as a father. Drawing on little-known diaries and letters, and unique access to Grace's own library, Simon Rae builds up a convincing psychological portrait of the man behind the most famous beard in English history.

Using contemporary accounts of W.G.'s greatest innings, many for the first time, Robert Low presents a radically new image of the sportsman who was recognised as the pre-eminent athlete of his day.From his emergence as a teenage prodigy to well past his fiftieth year W.G. dominated the game of cricket, taking 2,876 wickets and scoring 54,896 first-class runs in a career lasting an incredible 43 years, from 1865 to 1908. His beard and massive frame made him instantly recognisable wherever he went and his gamesmanship and wit were legendary.

A modern search for the greatest cricketer of all time on the centenary of his death

Volume three of a bibliography documenting all that has been written in the English language on the history of sport and physical education in Britain. It lists all secondary source material including reference works, in a classified order to meet the needs of the sports historian.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

On a sunny afternoon in May 1868, nineteen-year-old Gilbert Grace stood in a Wiltshire field, wondering why he was playing cricket against the Great Western Railway Club. A batting genius, 'W. G.' should have been starring at Lord's in the grand opening match of the season. But MCC did not want to elect this humble son of a provincial doctor. W. G's career was faltering before it had barely begun. Grace finally forced his way into MCC and over the next three decades, millions came to watch him - not just at Lord's, but across the British Empire and beyond. Only W. G. could boast a fan base that stretched from an American Civil War general and the Prince of Wales's mistress to the children who fingered his coat-tails as he walked down the street, just to say 'I touched him'. The public never knew the darker story behind W. G.'s triumphal progress. Accused of avarice, W. G. was married to the daughter of a bankrupt. Disparaged as a simpleton, his subversive mind recast how to play sport - thrillingly hard, pushing the rules, beating his opponents his own way. In Amazing Grace, Richard Tomlinson unearths a life lived so far ahead of his times that W. G. is still misunderstood today. For the first time, Tomlinson delves into long-buried archives in England and Australia to reveal the real W. G: a self-made, self-destructive genius, at odds with the world and himself.

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