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

Henry Somerset, 8th Duke of Beaufort

Captain Henry Charles FitzRoy Somerset, 8th Duke of Beaufort KG, PC, DL , styled Earl of Glamorgan until 1835 and Marquess of Worcester from 1835 to 1853, was a British peer, soldier and Conservative politician...

 (1824–1899). Between 1885 and 1902 it developed into a series of sporting books which aimed to cover comprehensively all major sport

Sport

A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...

s and pastimes

Hobby

A hobby is a regular activity or interest that is undertaken for pleasure, typically done during one's leisure time.- Etymology :A hobby horse is a wooden or wickerwork toy made to be ridden just like a real horse...

. The books were published in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 by Longmans, Green & Co. and in Boston by Little, Brown & Co.

The series was dedicated to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales

Edward VII of the United Kingdom

Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...

, "one of the best and keenest sportsmen of our time".

Editor

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:

Description

The Badminton Library was originally published in twenty-eight volumes between 1885 and 1896. To these were 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

Football

Football may refer to one of a number of team sports which all involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball with the foot to score a goal. The most popular of these sports worldwide is association football, more commonly known as just "football" or "soccer"...

 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

Marylebone Cricket Club

Marylebone Cricket Club is a cricket club in London founded in 1787. Its influence and longevity now witness it as a private members' club dedicated to the development of cricket. It owns, and is based at, Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood, London NW8. MCC was formerly the governing body of...

 as "The Parliament of Cricket" and describes the sport as "Our National Game".

Cycling (1887), by Viscount Bury

William Keppel, 7th Earl of Albemarle

William Coutts Keppel, 7th Earl of Albemarle KCMG, PC , styled Viscount Bury between 1851 and 1891, was a British soldier and politician. He served in the British Army before entering parliament in 1857...

, notes that riding the tricycle

Tricycle

A tricycle is a three-wheeled vehicle. While tricycles are often associated with the small three-wheeled vehicles used by pre-school-age children, they are also used by adults for a variety of purposes. In the United States and Canada, adult-sized tricycles are used primarily by older persons for...

 and bicycle

Bicycle

A bicycle, also known as a bike, pushbike or cycle, is a human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist, or bicyclist....

, 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

Thomas Huxley

Thomas Henry Huxley PC FRS was an English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution....

's words to the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

: "Since the time of Achilles

Achilles

In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....

, 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.

Skating (1892) deals first with 'Origins and Development', 'Figure skating

Figure skating

Figure skating is an Olympic sport in which individuals, pairs, or groups perform spins, jumps, footwork and other intricate and challenging moves on ice skates. Figure skaters compete at various levels from beginner up to the Olympic level , and at local, national, and international competitions...

', and 'Recreation and Racing', noting that Holland was "the Skater’s Paradise" and giving a list of racing records since the 1820s, then continues with chapters on Curling

Curling

Curling is a sport in which players slide stones across a sheet of ice towards a target area. It is related to bowls, boule and shuffleboard. Two teams, each of four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called "rocks", across the ice curling sheet towards the house, a...

, Toboggan

Toboggan

A toboggan is a simple sled which is a traditional form of transport used by the Innu and Cree of northern Canada. In modern times, it is used on snow to carry one or more people down a hill or other slope for recreation. Designs vary from simple, traditional models to modern engineered composites...

ing, Ice-Sailing

Sailing

Sailing is the propulsion of a vehicle and the control of its movement with large foils called sails. By changing the rigging, rudder, and sometimes the keel or centre board, a sailor manages the force of the wind on the sails in order to move the boat relative to its surrounding medium and...

 and Ice hockey

Ice hockey

Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...

.

Laura and Guy Waterman's Yankee Rock & Ice (2002) calls the Badminton Library "a quaint turn-of-the-century British series", while a review of the publication Collectors Guide to the Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes says of the books:

A useful series for purposes of comparison is the slightly later American Sportsman's Library

American Sportsman's Library

The American Sportsman's Library is an early and important series of 16 uniformly-bound volumes on sporting subjects, from an American perspective, published by the Macmillan Company in the period 1902-1905. Caspar Whitney, the owner/editor of Outing and a well-known outdoorsman and sporting...

.

Editions

The Badminton Library was published in three different formats:

1. The standard trade edition: octavo
   Octavo (book)
   Octavo is a technical term describing the format of a book, which refers to the size of leaves produced from folding a full sheet of paper on which multiple pages of text were printed to form the individual sections of a book...
   
   , bound in brown illustrated cloth.
2. The deluxe edition: octavo, bound in half blue Morocco, gilt titles to the spines and bright orange boards with a gilt coat of arms to the upper board, top page edges gilt.
3. The large paper deluxe edition: large octavo or quarto
   Quarto
   Quarto could refer to:* Quarto, a size or format of a book in which four leaves of a book are created from a standard size sheet of paper* For specific information about quarto texts of William Shakespeare's works, see:...
   
   , a limited edition of only two hundred and fifty copies, also bound in half blue Morocco and much the same in appearance as the deluxe edition.

Name

The name 'Badminton Library' was derived from the Duke of Beaufort's principal country house

English country house

The English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a London house. This allowed to them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these people, the term distinguished between town and country...

, Badminton

Badminton House

Badminton House is a large country house in Gloucestershire, England, and has been the principal seat of the Dukes of Beaufort since the late 17th century, when the family moved from Raglan Castle, which had been ruined in the English Civil War...

 in Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....

. There is no volume in the series on the sport of Badminton

Badminton

Badminton is a racquet sport played by either two opposing players or two opposing pairs , who take positions on opposite halves of a rectangular court that is divided by a net. Players score points by striking a shuttlecock with their racquet so that it passes over the net and lands in their...

, named after the same house.

In fiction

J. K. Stanford

J. K. Stanford

John Keith Stanford OBE MC was a British writer of the mid 20th century.He was educated at Rugby School and St. John's College, Oxford. Stanford was commissioned into the Suffolk Regiment in 1915 and was attached to the Tank Corps from 1917. He ended the First World War with the rank of...

's fictional game shot George Hysteron-Proteron

George Hysteron-Proteron

Colonel the Hon. George Hysteron-Proteron is a fictional character created by author J. K. Stanford, He is introduced as a British soldier, sporting gun, and Lord of the manor of Five Mile Wallop, Cambridgeshire...

 was said to have been educated at Eton

Eton College

Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

, the Royal Military College, Sandhurst

Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst , commonly known simply as Sandhurst, is a British Army officer initial training centre located in Sandhurst, Berkshire, England...

, and the Badminton Library.

External links

• Collectors Guide to the Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes from the Valuable Book Group web site
• Badminton Library books in PDF-format