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Cricket, Fiction and Nation traces the historic arc of fiction dealing with cricket from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century to its emergence in the early twentieth century as a form of serious literature, its subsequent decline into genre writing and its rejuvenation in the global world of the twenty-first century. The writers discussed include Mary Russell Mitford, Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, P.G. Wodehouse, James Joyce, E.M. Forster, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Dorothy L. Sayers, C. Day Lewis writing as Nicholas Blake, L.P. Hartley, Simon Raven, J.L. Carr, Mike Marqusee, Nancy Spain, Caryl Phillips, Romesh Gunesekera, Anthony Quinn and Shehan Karunatilaka. It also considers how cricket has featured in the TV series Inspector Morse and Midsomer Murders.
Cricket, Fiction and Nation is a well-informed and entertaining collection which will bring hours of pleasure to cricket lovers and to lovers of writing. — Abdulrazak Gurnah, Professor, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2021.
Thoroughly researched and lovingly compiled, Cricket, Fiction and Nation is a fascinating study of the role cricket has played in shaping and defining English culture, and by extension England itself. — Jonathan Liew, Sports writer and columnist at the Guardian.
Unfailingly informative and insightful, Rod Edmond’s capacious survey of cricket and fiction – at once rigorous and warm-hearted – will make a huge appeal to all literary-minded aficionados of the most literary of games. — David Kynaston, Independent Historian.
A rich, compelling work, surveying two centuries of cricket writing in English. Edmond discusses the usual suspects as well as lesser-known references, spanning genres from murder mystery to comedy. With remarkable breadth and insight, the book offers a literary lens on the game’s shifting cultural and social significance. — Dr Souvik Naha, Senior Lecturer in Imperial and Post-colonial History, School of Social & Political Sciences, University of Glasgow.
Introduction; 1-The Rise and Fall of the Village Cricket Story; 2-The Public School Cricket Story; 3-The Cricket Murder Story; 4-Cricket and Comedy; 5-Cricket and Tragedy; 6-Post-Colonial and Global Cricket Fiction; 7-Endgame; Bibliography; Acknowledgements; Index