Badminton Library

The Badminton Library, called in full The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes, was a sporting and publishing project conceived and founded by Henry Somerset, 8th Duke of Beaufort (1824–1899). Between 1885 and 1902 it developed into a series of sporting books which aimed to cover comprehensively all major sports and pastimes. The books were published in London by Longmans, Green & Co. and in Boston by Little, Brown & Co.

The series was dedicated to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, "one of the best and keenest sportsmen of our time".

The founder of the Library, the Duke of Beaufort, acted as its overseeing editor, assisted by Alfred E. T. Watson, and chose authors who were authorities in their fields. Explaining his purpose, the Duke said:

The Badminton Library was originally published in twenty-eight volumes between 1885 and 1896. To these was later added Rowing & Punting (1898), superseding Boating (1888). New volumes for Athletics (1898) and Football (1899) supplemented the original Athletics and Football (1887). In 1902, the final entirely new volume, Motors and Motor-Driving, covered a new sport, and lastly there was a new edition of Cricket in 1920.

On the combining of athletics and football in a single volume, Mike Huggins says in The Victorians and Sport (2004) that it suggests "...that football's leading place was not yet assured amongst the more literate reading public."

The original volume on Cricket (1888) has sixteen chapters on topics such as 'Batting', 'Bowling', 'Fielding', and 'Umpires'. It defines the Marylebone Cricket Club as "The Parliament of Cricket" and describes the sport as "Our National Game".Allan Gibson Steel wrote the chapter on bowling.

Cycling (1887), by Viscount Bury, notes that riding the tricycle and bicycle, whether by women or by men, "is by far the most recent of all sports in the Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes. There is none which has developed more rapidly in the last few years." It considers that "England may be looked upon as the Home of Cycling" and quotes Thomas Huxley's words to the Royal Society: "Since the time of Achilles, no improvement had added anything to the speed or strength attainable by the unassisted powers of man", commenting that a bicyclist had recently raced 146 miles in only ten hours.

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