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38 | Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society
The Publication History of Ranjitsinhji’s The Jubilee
Book of Cricket
david finkelstein
In 1897, the Edinburgh based publishers William Blackwood & Sons
published the best known cricket book of the early twentieth century, Prince
Ranjitsinhji’s The Jubilee Book of Cricket. In this work, Ranjitsinhji, one of
the most famous and eccentric of late Victorian cricketers, known for his
unorthodox batting stance and propensity for breaking batting records,
compiled a personal account of cricketing insight that became a bestseller.
Despite it being an iconic work of its time, little has been written about
Ranjitsinhji’s text and the process by which a cricketing legend was translated
into a bestselling author.
The negotiations between the well-established, conservative Scottish
publishing firm and a transplanted, Indian upper-class sportsman were
conducted in a manner that said a great deal about class and the exportation
and flow within the British Empire of Victorian conceptions of sports ethics
and ‘gentlemanly conduct’. Intermediaries both in the negotiation process and
in the writing process contributed greatly to turning a mere idea into a fully-
fledged book within the space of six months. This case study draws on
unpublished archival material to offer an example of the interlinking of sports
with commerce, and the use of celebrity to successfully promote the printed
results of this collaboration.
Prince Ranji
Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji, later Maharaja Jam Sahib of Navanagar, though known
throughout his life generally as Ranjitsinhji or Ranji, was born 10 September
1872 in Sarodar, a village on the Kathiawar peninsula of north-west India.
(figure 17) His family was related to the ruler of Navanagar, and indeed for a
time between the ages of six and ten Ranji was made temporary heir to the Jam
Sahib of Navanagar, Vihabji, due to the latter’s failure to produce a male
successor. Ranji was sent to Rajkumar College, at Rajkot, a college set up to
educate future and potential dynastic rulers, where from seven until sixteen he
was tutored appropriately. Personal matters would become complicated for
him when he turned ten, for at this stage Vihabji had a son, Jaswantsinhji, who
was elected heir to the Navanagar throne, and succeeded to it on his father’s
death in 1895. Controversy over this succession ended on Jaswantsinhji’s
death, under mysterious circumstances in 1906, and Ranjitsinhji pushed ahead
of other claimants, holding the position until his death in 1933.
Ranji’s turbulent personal, sporting and political life has been subject of
Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society | 39
Figure 17:Ranjitsinhji, from The Windsor Magazine, vol. 6, October 1897, p. 523.
several biographies, the latest of which, Simon Wilde’s Ranji: The Strange
Genius of Ranjitsinhji (2005), argues convincingly that Ranji’s achievements
in cricket became crucial to his political ascendancy – that is, he was able to
use it to retain British support for his cause when needed. How, then, did he
get involved in cricket, and in what manner did this translate into the work?
ranji and cricket
Ranji gained his love of cricket from his time at Rajkumar College, where the
English headmaster, Chester MacNaghten, supported his involvement in sport
and his academic development. It was Chester who also arranged for him to
enter Trinity College, Cambridge,in 1889, where he concentrated his efforts
in sport (to the detriment of his academic work). He joined the university club,
and through great effort and practice, the development of unorthodox batting
stances, and successful plays for local clubs, he became the first Indian to gain
entry into the first eleven of the Cambridge cricket team, in 1892, and thus the
first to earn a ‘cricket blue’. He left Cambridge in 1894 and began playing for
county cricket teams, most notably Sussex county, where he partnered another
famous cricketer, C.B. Fry, who became a friendly rival and close friend.
Between them they notched up several cricketing records for batting, fielding
and scoring between 1895 and 1904. Ranji was also famously chosen to
represent England in test matches against Australia in spring 1897, and also
toured with the team across Australia in autumn 1897-1898; the Australian
racial bar during this visit was lifted for him in the form of Australia providing
him with an exemption on the duty tax imposed on non-white entrants to the
country.
ranji and the jubilee book of cricket
Ranji’s test match successes, and his impending visit to Australia in September
1897 prompted publishing interest in his views on cricket. As far back as
August 1896, the Edinburgh based publishing firm William Blackwood &
Sons had contemplated getting Ranji to contribute to their renowned monthly
journal Blackwood’s Magazine, in particular prompted by friendly
intervention on their behalf by Alfred Gibson, sports journalist for the Star,
contributor to periodicals such as the Windsor Magazine, and under the
pseudonym ‘Rover’, sports writer for the Morning Leader (founded in 1892
and later amalgamated with the Daily News). In late February 1897 Gibson
contacted the firm’s London manager David Storrar Meldrum, whom he knew
well, to alert him that Ranji had in mind writing a book on cricket. ‘Ranji has
not written on cricket,’ he reported, ‘but if you could get him to do so, it would
be a great hit. Everyone rich and otherwise would spend a shilling to read
Ranji on the Australians.’1Gibson offered to steer Ranji and his work to
Blackwood’s, and suggested other individuals to approach should Ranji spurn
the firm’s overtures. David Meldrum and William Blackwood III, head of the
40 | Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society
firm, jumped at this chance to enter into partnership with a sporting legend.
Blackwood accordingly wrote to Ranji on 1 March 1897 asking for a
contribution to Blackwood’s Magazine on Cricket in the Victorian Era (a piece
later incorporated into the book), and promoting his firm’s ability to make
Ranji’s planned book a success. ‘We are accustomed to bring out such
publications in a high class manner, and it would be a pleasure to me to make
your work specially attractive from every point of view,’ he wrote.2
The firm then entered into negotiation with Ranji’s legal representatives,
Ashurst, Morris, Crisp and Co., and after viewing sample chapters and
following a two month period of negotiation, secured on 11 May 1897 a firm
commitment to publish the work at an uncharacteristically high price: £2,000
in advances, and a royalty of 20% of the nominal selling price of the various
editions planned.3The constant agitation and difficulties subsequently
encountered in getting Ranji to meet deadlines for copy and proofs, and the
consequent delay to the work’s publication, however, led the firm to revise the
agreement in July so as to lower the advance to £1,000.4They would later
supplement this with a further £500 based on the healthy sales achieved in the
first months of publication.
To recoup the sums involved, the firm made several plans to maximise
returns on their investment – first, through fees from pre-publication
serialisations of material both in the UK and in the colonies; second, by
income from advertisements for the colonial editions; and third, by issuing
three different editions aimed at separate stratified markets. These were to be:
• a deluxe edition of 355 copies priced at £5.5s., gilt edged and personally
signed by Ranji;
• a fine paper edition of 148 copies priced at £1.5s.;
• a popular edition at 6s.; five editions of this version would be printed
between August and December 1897, totalling 26,000 copies, and
another 6,250 printed in April 1898 due to unprecedented demand,
bringing the total issued within the year to 32,250.
The firm initially had hoped to publish the work in July 1897, just as the
cricket season was winding down, and with enough time to capitalise on the
publicity attending Ranji’s impending tour with England in Australia. With
this in mind, the firm pressed Ranji to produce a final chapter on his thoughts
on Australian cricket, and contacted several Australian cricketers in England
to help him with the piece, including W.L. Murdoch (1854-1911), a wicket-
keeper who had played for Australia in the 1880s and then captained Sussex
where Ranji played between 1893-1899, and Frederick Robert Spofforth
(1853-1926) (figure 18) -a highly-praised, over-arm bowler who had played
against England in the 1870s and 1880s, and had written several magazine
articles in the 1890s on the history of Australian cricket. The article was never
produced, though the firm was able to feature the book’s final chapter, ‘Cricket
in the Victorian Era’, as a sample ‘taster’ in its July 1897 issue of Blackwood’s
Magazine.
Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society | 41
42 | Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society
Figure 18:F.R. Spofforth, The Jubilee Book of Cricket, p. 142.
This pattern of tense negotiation and tardy delivery would become a
standard feature of the firm’s dealings with the Prince throughout the book’s
production. During the crucial months of June and July leading up to
publication, Ranji was slow to produce copy, edit proofs, correct diagrams and
commission photographs needed. The Prince originally planned to dedicate
the book to one of his early mentors, the cricketer Stanley Jackson, (figure 19)
but in light of it being the Jubilee year of Queen Victoria’s coronation,
changed his mind and sought permission to dedicate it to her instead.
However, to his publishers’ frustration, Ranji dithered in writing to the
Queen’s royal secretary for official sanction, thus compromising early
dispatch of publicity material highlighting this feature.
At other times, chapters were completed by other authors but not well
revised by Ranji. Threaded throughout the correspondence between the
Blackwood firm, Ranji and his lawyers are clusters of letters and telegrams
pleading for completion of promised drafts, with insouciant responses from
Ranji promising work by return of post, followed by threats from Blackwood’s
when material failed to arrive to cancel publication of the work. Thus one
telegram despatched by Blackwood’s on 28 June 1897 read, ‘No corrected
proof returned yet, must withhold publication this season if not received
immediately.’5Two weeks later, a similar urgent telegram was sent to Ranji’s
lawyers: ‘No word from Prince today. We give him till Monday when if
completion is not forward we shall withhold publication this season.’6
Editorial work was complicated further by the fact that Ranji involved
Henry Montagu Butler, Master of Trinity College, in looking over corrected
proofs – the resulting extra flourishes and changes Butler insisted on had the
printers in despair. Ranji’s troubled path to publication was common
knowledge in literary and sporting circles, a point highlighted in an interview
with Ranji published in The Windsor Magazine in October 1897: Ranji was
pointedly asked to comment on ‘the strange story from Blackwood’s – about
compositors turning grey, and about the expletive and explosive humour of the
management concerning your treatment of the proofs.’7Ranji ‘laughed
heartily but deftly turned the incident aside’, at which point the writer of the
profile, without naming Butler, discreetly outlined his involvement in the
revision process: ‘The Professor had more regard for classical English than for
cricket, and he ornamented the margins of the proofs profusely. These went
directly to the printers, and created no small amount of consternation. I believe
it took a wonderful amount of tact and diplomatic skill to unravel the situation
and lighten the margins.’8
The support Ranji received in producing the work are aspects of the book’s
production that have been the subject of much speculation. The work was
written and published within the space of six months, between March and
early August 1897, an amazingly quick operation for what was a complex text
that included over 100 photographs of contemporary cricketers and game
stances, diagrams of fielding positions, six chapters on aspects of cricket such
Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society | 43
44 | Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society
Figure 19:F.S. Jackson, from The Windsor Magazine, vol. 6, July 1897, p. 155.
Figure 20:Ranjitsinhji at bat, from The Windsor Magazine, vol. 6, July 1897, p. 153.
as ‘Batting’, ‘Bowling’, ‘Fielding’, ‘Training’, and several chapters on
contemporary cricket activity in English public schools, Oxford and
Cambridge University, and the English counties leagues.
Ranji did not write all of these pieces, and where appropriate authors were
credited for their contributions. However, evidence in the Blackwood letters
suggest that he did not in fact write much of the rest of the book either. When
the book was published, the cricket journalist and local historian A.J. Gaston
sent Blackwood’s a bill for his contribution to the sections on County Cricket,
which had been unacknowledged in the work but were significant in their
details. The invoice was duly forwarded to Ranji’s legal firm. More significant
was the intervention of representatives for C.B. Fry, Ranji’s batting partner,
who contacted the firm and Ranji’s lawyers in September 1897 to demand, and
eventually negotiate, a percentage of the royalties for his contribution to
Ranji’s text. Fry had in essence acted as ghost-writer for Ranji, producing not
only important sequences in the book but also rewriting and recasting the
article on ‘Cricket in the Victorian Era’ published in Blackwood’s Magazine in
July 1897 and reproduced in the Jubilee book. Fry’s interventions would have
made sense – he wrote often for contemporary magazine and newspaper
publications during this period, subsidising his career as an amateur cricketer.
Simon Wilde plays down Fry’s contribution to the volume in his biography of
Ranji, noting only that he helped with final revisions and dismissing
‘unfounded speculations about Ranji’s ability to write such a book and Fry’s
precise contribution.’9However, the fact that royalties were accorded to Fry
suggests that his participation was not confined to minor editorial matters.
Fry’s service to Ranji did not end there – he also acted as an astute and
supportive publicist for the book and for Ranji’s personal image. In July 1897,
as the book was being prepared for launch, Fry produced an article on
cricketing contemporaries for The Windsor Magazine that included a fulsome
appreciation of Ranji’s cricketing skills. ‘He is mellow and kind and single-
hearted, and has no spark of jealousy in his composition,’ Fry effused. ‘No one
has a keener eye for what is good in other people; the better they play the more
he likes it. He is a cricketer to the tips of his slim fingers, an artist with an
artist’s eye for the game.’10 [figure 20]
It would not be the only piece of publicity placed in magazines and
newspapers extolling Ranji and his new book. Blackwood’s assiduously
worked at placing extracts of Ranji’s work in useful outlets – The Windsor
Magazine featured a chapter in its August 1897 issue; the Daily Chronicle paid
£150 to serialise 30,000 words; and the Manchester Guardian paid £200 for
similar serialisation rights. Furthermore, interviews were printed in relevant
journals – as for example the profile featured in the October issue of the
ubiquitous Windsor Magazine. The firm failed to secure serialisation rights in
the colonial market, which they blamed on Ranji’s failure to produce in time
his promised chapter on Australian cricket. Nevertheless, the 925 copies
issued in a Colonial Edition of 6s.sold out, netting over £138, and over 800
Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society | 45
copies were sold as exports, also netting a tidy sum of £142.
The firm’s hopes for sales of advertisements in the Colonial Edition were
also hampered by the late and rushed production of the work – at least one
appeal for an advertisement exists in the archives, an undated message sent to
H.J. Gray, the Cambridge manufacturers of the cricket bats that were featured
prominently in a full page spread in the book.11 It has not been possible to
verify whether an advertisement for these bats does in fact appear in the
Colonial Edition. (figure 21)
Sales for the work, despite being issued late in the season in the first week
of August 1897, were phenomenal. In five months, between August and the
end of December 1897, over 197 of the deluxe edition of 355 copies were sold;
910 of the 1,428 copies of the fine paper edition sold; and 23,000 of the 26,000
printed in the 6s.popular edition sold. Another 6,800 copies of the popular
edition would be printed and sold over the next four years. In all, the work
made a handsome profit for the publishers of £4,254.12
conclusion
For Ranji, this book became an ideal opportunity to associate himself with a
firm with strong connections to the ruling conservative elite, the military and
imperial audiences who had a say in the running and management of India.
Ranji would use his cricketing fame and connections, and the publicity created
in the wake of the book’s publication, to pursue his political claims in the
decades that followed. The work also forged his image as a gentleman
cricketer. This entered British popular culture via the popular ‘Billy Bunter’
series of adventure tales, created by Charles Hamilton under the nom de plume
Frank Richards, which ran in the boys’ weekly magazine The Magnet from
1907 until 1940. One of the ‘famous five’ characters who featured throughout
the series was ‘Inky’, or Hurree Jamset Ram Singh, an athletic, cricket playing
Indian prince clearly modeled on Ranjitsinhji.
Such a portrayal signified the extent to which Ranjit would become
identified with England. In later years, his continued Anglophilia,
identification with British social customs and modes of conduct, refusal to
support the development of cricket in India, and continued connexion with the
political status quo of British-ruled India would lead to the Indian National
Congress questioning and finding wanting his commitment to India. By the
time of his death in 1933, his reputation in India had declined dramatically.
Nevertheless, his sporting record and place in British cricketing history as an
outstanding ‘gentleman cricketer’ would remain intact, thanks in no small part
to the success of The Jubilee Book of Cricket.
46 | Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society
Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society | 47
Figure 21:Playfair Driver Bat, from The Jubilee Book of Cricket, p. 146.
48 | Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society
1. National Library of Scotland,
Blackwood Archive, MS 4645, f. 17-18.
2. Blackwood Archive, MS 30384, p. 76.
William Blackwood III to Ranjitsinhji, 1
March 1897.
3. Blackwood Archive, MS 30690,
Memorandum of Agreement, dated 11
May 1897.
4. Blackwood Archive, MS 30339, p.
228. William Blackwood and Sons to
Ashurst, Morris, Crisp & Co., 20 July
1897.
5. Blackwood Archive, MS 30339, p.
141.
6. Blackwood Archive, MS 30339, p.
197. William Blackwood and Sons to
Ashurst, Morris, Crisp & Co, 9 July
1897.
7. The Windsor Magazine, October 1897,
p. 524.
8. The Windsor Magazine, October 1897,
p. 524.
9. Simon Wilde, Ranji: The Strange
Genius of Ranjitsinhji (London: Aurum
Press, 2005), p. 84.
10. The Windsor Magazine, July 1897, p.
153-154.
11. Blackwood Archive, MS 30339, p.
259.
12. Blackwood Archive, MS. 30864,
Publication Ledgers, p. 133-134, 262.
notes and references
