William Goldwin (c.1682 โ 1747 at Bristol) was an English schoolteacher and vicar who left his mark on cricket by creating the sport's earliest known work of literature.[1] Goldwin, whose name is sometimes spelt "Goldwyn", wrote a poem of 95 competent and sometimes graceful lines of Latin hexameters on a rural cricket match.[2] It was called In Certamen Pilae (On a Ball Game) and it was published in his Musae Juveniles in March 1706.[3][4]
Little is known of Goldwin himself. He attended Eton and then graduated to King's College, Cambridge in 1700. He subsequently became a Master of Bristol Grammar School and was Vicar of St Nicholas' Church in Bristol until his death in 1747.
References
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edit- Altham, H. S. (1962). A History of Cricket, Volume 1 (to 1914). George Allen & Unwin.
- Birley, Derek (1999). A Social History of English Cricket. Aurum.
- Major, John (2007). More Than A Game. HarperCollins.
- Maun, Ian (2009). From Commons to Lord's, Volume One: 1700 to 1750. Roger Heavens. ISBN 978-1-900592-52-9.