W. G. Grace: A Life

by SimonRae (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $3.25

  Enjoying a celebrity shared by perhaps only Gladstone and Queen Victoria of his contemporaries, W.G. Grace was the world's first sporting superstar. Researched in archives from Grimsby to Australia, and drawing on diaries, letters, and access to the cricketer's own library, this biography offers a radical analysis of Grace's career. It also 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. Discussion of his private life encompasses his childhood, his marriage, his children, his grief at the death of a daughter and later his eldest son, and his career as a doctor. The book includes an extensive statistical survey by Bill Frindall.

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.25

  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.