Croquet: The Laws and Regulations of the Game, Thoroughly Revised, with a Description of the Implements, Etc., Etc.

Boston: A. Williams & Co, 1865. Very Good -. Boston: A. Williams & Co., 1865. First American Edition, "Reprinted from the Eighteenth London Edition." Slim octavo (23.5cm.); publishers limp green pictorial cloth embossed in gilt; 30,[2]pp.; frontispiece and illus. throughout, some full-paged, pictorial local advertisements in rear. Binding rather rubbed at extremities and gilt very slightly starting to flake, textblock shaken and soiled throughout having seen heavy early use: the front endpapers display three contemporary ownership and gift inscriptions, of Geo. A. Everett, Lula Everett, and Gracie Everett, of Concord, Mass. A Good to Very Good, well-loved copy of the scarce American edition.

Early croquet manual exported for an American audience, the game having been first entered public record just a decade earlier in England. The intended audience was certainly women and children, the upper cover adorned with a finely-dressed young woman with croquet mallet, her left foot keeping two croquet balls in place. A similar figure dominates the crowded frontispiece as well. Local advertisements bound in rear for croquet equipment from D.O. Goodrich of Boston, and Whipple & Smith of Salem, Mass., who had begun production just the year before, in 1864.

Three copies only of this edition in OCLC as of July, 2024, at Harvard, U. Penn, and the Redwood Library (Rhode Island).