Death of Frederick Lillywhite — End of an Era for Cricket Publishing, 1866

The Lillywhite name was already cricket's most famous family of professionals and publishers when Fred died. Three Lillywhites — William ('Nonpareil'), John (the umpire), and James (the senior) — were brothers; Fred was William's son and James senior's nephew. James Lillywhite Junior, who continued the publishing tradition after Fred's death, was a different cousin, a fast bowler who would captain England's first overseas Test side in 1877.

Fred's health had been deteriorating since 1864; the breakup with Wisden had left him without his most resourceful business partner, and the Scores and Biographies project was extraordinarily expensive. By the summer of 1866 he had moved to Brighton for his health.

Frederick Lillywhite — son of William 'Nonpareil' Lillywhite, who had been instrumental in legalising roundarm bowling in 1835 — had been cricket's leading publisher for almost two decades by the time he died. He had launched The Guide to Cricketers in 1849, when he was not yet twenty, and had built it into the indispensable reference for the English game. He had also designed and operated the famous wooden 'printing tent' that he took round the country to print scores at major matches — at one point dragging it on a special railway truck around Britain and even to North America for the 1859 Parr-Wisden tour. From 1862 he had based himself at the Kennington Oval and produced Scores and Biographies, the multi-volume reference work that documented English cricket back to 1772. He never quite recovered financially from the costs of the printing tent or from the breakup of his partnership with John Wisden, who had launched a rival almanack in 1864. His death at Brighton on 15 September 1866 fragmented the family business: his cousin James Lillywhite Junior continued to publish a guide ('the Green Lily') from 1865, and the rival John Lillywhite (the umpire of the 1862 Willsher walk-off) ran his own annual; both were eventually absorbed into the Lillywhite family confusion that lasted until 1900. Wisden, by contrast, was already in its third edition and would survive every Lillywhite imprint.

The Guide to Cricketers folded with Fred's death. Scores and Biographies passed to other hands and was eventually completed in 15 volumes (the last published 1925). James Lillywhite Junior's Cricketers' Companion ran until 1880; John Lillywhite's annual until the 1880s. None of them survived as long as Wisden. Within a generation, the Lillywhite name in cricket publishing was a memory; the firm of John Wisden & Co was an institution.