Details of over 300 titles
| Title | Bowls - The Text Book of the Game How to Become a Champion |
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| Compiler | Richard Thomas Harrison ('Boomerang') | ||
| Publisher | Not stated, but probably R T Harrison, Australia | ||
| First published | Not stated | ||
| ISBN | Pre-ISBN system | ||
| Edition reviewed | 2nd (published 1937?*) | ||
| Hardback/softback | Hardback | ||
| List price | Not known | ||
| Cover size (cm) (height x width) |
22.6 x 14.7 | ||
| Number of pages | 96 (including advertisements) | ||
| Number of pages with | Coloured photos | Black & white photos | Line drawings |
| None | 21 | 6 | |
| Synopsis | For a bowls historian this is an intriguing publication. The compiler, Richard Thomas Harrison ('Boomerang'), and the sub-title, 'How to Become a Champion', indicate that this was the forerunner of a book first published in 1939 - How to Become a Champion at Bowls. This book is remarkably still in print (the 21st edition was published in 2003) and therefore surely holds the record of remaining in print longer than any other bowls book. During that time its sales of over 150,000 copies is perhaps also a record.
Bowls - The Textbook of the Game - very much a manual - establishes the pattern of the books that were to follow by covering the practical aspects of bowls in a series of 43 short 'chapters', compared to 92 in How to Become a Champion at Bowls†. Page numbers increased respectively from 96 to 204. Although controversial, for example the author states on the first page of the introduction to Bowls - The Textbook of the Game that '. . . the methods I propound, particularly in the matters of grip and stance, are THE ONLY CORRECT ONES', no one can deny the notable success that Richard Thomas Harrison was later to achieve with How to Become a Champion at Bowls - a title that came to be commonly referred to as 'the bowler's encyclopaedia'. *There is no printed date of publication, but an inscription on one of the preliminary pages is dated 28.11.37. †18th edition, published in 1986 Also by Richard Thomas Harrison: |
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