The Cricketers of My Time

The Cricketers of My Time is a memoir of cricket, nominally written by the former Hambledon cricketer John Nyren about the players of the late 18th century, most of whom he knew personally. Nyren, who had no recognised literary skill, collaborated with the eminent Shakespearean scholar Charles Cowden Clarke to produce his work. It is believed that Cowden Clarke recorded Nyren's verbal reminiscences and so "ghosted" the text.

The work became a major source for the history and personalities of Georgian cricket and has also come to be regarded as the first classic in cricket's now rich literary history. Writing in 1957, John Arlott described it as "still the finest study of cricket and cricketers ever written".

The Cricketers of My Time was first published in serial form by a weekly London newspaper called The Town in 1832. The following year, the series with some modifications appeared as the second part of an instructional book entitled The Young Cricketer's Tutor, which was also the title of the book's first part. There was a third part called A Few Memoranda Respecting the Progress of Cricket and that is generally referred to as the Memoranda. The first edition of the full book was published by Effingham Wilson of the Royal Exchange, London in June 1833, and was reviewed by the Rev. John Mitford for The Gentleman's Magazine in July 1833.

John Nyren died in 1837, but there was a second edition of the book in 1840 followed by eleven subsequent editions to 1855. These editions were retitled Nyren's Cricketers Guide. A further edition, with introduction, footnotes and appendices by F. S. Ashley-Cooper, was published by Gay & Bird in 1902. In 1907, there was another edition produced by E. V. Lucas titled The Hambledon Men. Lucas' edition included Mitford's review and the interview by James Pycroft of Billy Beldham, one of Nyren's particular heroes, as well as pieces by Arthur Haygarth and Mary Russell Mitford, accompanied by Lucas's own commentary on the source material.

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