Cleveland Public Library

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Baseball fiction firsts at CPL

 

Cleveland Public Library’s baseball collection in the Social Sciences Department includes many early baseball novels. The infancy of American baseball fiction from the Civil War up to 1910 is very well represented in the Library’s collection. The first mention of baseball in fiction is generally credited to Jane Austen, who uses the word in Northanger Abbey:

“[I]t was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base-ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books. . . (p.5.)“

Northanger Abbey was drafted during 1797 and 1798, but Jane Austen continued revising and editing it until 1803.  Unfortunately, it was not actually published until 1818.   Cleveland Public Library’s collection includes one nineteenth century edition of Northanger Abbey.

The first published mention of baseball in fiction occurred in 1799 in Cassandra Cooke’s Battleridge: an historical tale, founded on facts:

“… I came to bid adieu to my old playmate, Sir Ralph Vesey: how kindly did he part with poor Jack Jephson, as he called me! ‘Ah!’ says he, ‘no more cricket, no more base-ball, they are sending me to Geneva’ (p.2.)”

Battleridge was actually published before Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.  David Block notes that Cassandra Cooke, coincidentally, was in correspondence with Jane Austen during 1798 while both of these novels were being written. 

It should also be noted that not only do two women, Jane Austen and Cassandra Cooke, introduce to the game of baseball to fiction, but fiction’s first baseball player is a girl:

Catherine Morland, Jane Austen’s heroine from Northanger Abbey, is the Queen of Baseball.  This picture of Catherine Morland is from one of the Hugh Thompson illustrations found in Cleveland Public Library’s 1897 edition of Northanger Abbey.  On the American side of the Atlantic, baseball is introduced by male authors and stocked with male players.

At the time Anton Grobani published his pioneering Guide to Baseball Literature in 1975, the first American novel to include baseball activity was thought to be William Everett’s 1868 novel, Changing Base.

More recently Andy McCue, SABR’s indefatigable baseball fiction historian, has identified an earlier example of American baseball. The Bobbin Boy, or, How Nat Got His Learning: An Example for Youth has an extensive description of a baseball game on pages 50-53. 

The Bobbin Boy was written by William Makepeace Thayer (1816-1814) and published in 1860 in Boston by J.E. Tilton.  Although the book contains a description of playing baseball, it does not use the word “baseball.”  That honor goes to Alfred Oldfellow’s novel, Uncle Nat, or, The Good Time Which George and Frank Had Trapping, Fishing, Camping Out, etc.  This book was published in 1865 in New York by D. Appleton and Company.

The first American novel centered on baseball activities was The Great Match and Other Matches. Roberts Brothers of Boston first published it in 1877, and Cleveland Public Library has a copy dated 1880.  The book appeared as part of their anonymously authored No Name Series, but the author has since been identified as John Trowbridge (1843-1923).

Cleveland Public Library also has the first Canadian novel featuring baseball activity, The Sky Pilot: A Tale of the Foothills published in Toronto by The Westminster Company in 1899; a scanned version of this title can be seen here.  The author is listed as Ralph Connor, a pseudonym of the Rev. Dr. Charles William Gordon (1860-1937), who was both a church leader and a best-selling novelist.

Many other interesting baseball novels are available at Cleveland Public Library.  The reference baseball fiction collection is housed in the Social Sciences department, while circulating baseball novels can be found in the Popular Library, in the Literature Department, and in the Youth Services Department.