Farewell to Cricket signed by Don Bradman first edition 1950

London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1950
 
8vo., green publisher’s cloth gilt to spine; unclipped green dust wrapper (12’6 net), featuring a portrait illustration of Bradman with his facsimile signature beneath; pp. [iv], 5-320; with black and white frontispiece portrait of the author and a further 27 personally-chosen photographs throughout; spine tips sightly pressed; light spotting and offsetting to the endleaves and paste-downs; a very clean copy, otherwise; in the bright dust jacket slightly toned to lower panel with light shelf wear; nicks and chips to spine ends, one to the lower panel; two slightly larger chips at head; a very good example.  
 
First edition of this autobiographical work, neatly signed by the author in blue ink pen underneath his portrait to p. [ii]. The photographs included feature personal family snaps (the author as a baby, Bradman’s wife ‘who has been such an inspiration throughout my career), as well as a series from his professional career (A splendid example of the movements made by the author when cutting off the back foot, meeting Her Majesty the Queen at Lords in 1948, etc.)
 
Sir Donald George Bradman (1908-2001) was an Australian international cricketer who is widely regarded as being one of the greatest batsmen of all time. In International test matches Bradman scored 6,996 runs for Australia, and, with a Test batting average of 99.94, he is considered by some to hold the greatest achievement by any sportsman in any major sport. Born in Cootamundra, New South Wales to a long line of cricketers before him, the story that he practised alone and incessantly with a cricket stump and a golf ball from a young age has become part of Australian folklore. Bradman hit his first century at the age of 12, and by the age of 22 he had become one of Australia's sporting idols at the height of the Great Depression. Despite being famously opposed to the idea of fame, he was undoubtedly one of Australia’s first major ‘celebrities’, and during his 20-year playing career the British had to develop a controversial set of tactics, known as Bodyline, to curb his scoring. His image has appeared on Australian postage stamps and coins, and towards the end of his life a museum dedicated to his life was opened in his honour. 
 
Following Farewell to Cricket, Bradman wrote one other work, a coaching manual entitled The Art of Cricket which was published in 1958.