Lillywhite's Companion to the Bat — 1845

Cricket instructional literature before 1845 was thin. Nyren's Young Cricketer's Tutor (1833) was a memoir; the Lillywhites had been publishing single-sheet laws and fixture cards since the 1830s but no substantial instruction.

The Lillywhite family business expanded steadily through the 1840s. Frederick was the most active publisher; his father William contributed cricket expertise.

The Lillywhite Companion to the Bat was a short, cheap instructional book aimed at the aspiring club cricketer. It first appeared in 1845, the same year as Felix's much more substantial Felix on the Bat, and was reissued in successive editions through the late 1840s and 1850s. The text covered bat selection, stance, the strokes and basic bowling technique; it was less ambitious than Felix's work but cheaper, more portable and aimed at a wider audience. Together with the Lillywhite Guide (the annual that began in 1849), the Companion established the Lillywhite name on cricket bookshelves in every clubroom in the country. The 1840s family publishing operation, run principally by Frederick Lillywhite with editorial input from his father William, was the foundation on which all subsequent cricket book publishing — including Wisden's 1864 first edition — was built.

The Companion remained in print into the 1860s and was eventually superseded by W.G. Grace's longer instruction books and by the Wisden annual.