"Base ball"

[Joel S. Berson]

A correspondent alleges the following references to "base ball" prior
to 1800.  Are these useful?  Useless?  Presumably unrelated to the
American game, but so -- I assume -- is the OED's c1815 Jane Austen
quote.  They would be at least instances of the use of the phrase.

I would look in the ADS-L archives except that there are over 1800
messages with the word "baseball" in them -- and that's only since 1999.

Joel


>There are several references to base ball in England before  in
>writing  before 1800.
>
>David Block, in his Baseball Before We Knew It mentions them in
>several places, most notably in chapter10..

[Apparently all the following are taken from Block and Wiles  GB, Preview.


>A book intended for children, A Pretty Little Pocket Book, mentions
>a game for children in which they struck a ball and ran around bases.
>
>Lady Hervey ( aka Mary Lepel) writes of the royal children playing
>at base ball in a letter of November 1748. They played indoors with
>aristocratic children and lords and ladies in waiting, it is assumed.
>
>Then Jane Austen, writing in the 1790s, mentions that her heroine
>Catherine preferred baseball to studies.

[I read, actually first published in 1817, although probably written
1798-1799 and the OED cites c1815.]


>In 1875 , in Jolly Games for Happy Homes describes a game without a
>bat but which included running around bases. It was a game girls could play.
>
>Also mentioned is a quote from a character in a book of 1799,
>Battleridge in which a man bemoans being sent to Geneva because, "No
>more cricket, no more base-ball."

Cooke, Cassandra.  Battleridge: an historical tale, founded on facts
... By a lady of quality ... .  London, G. Cawthorn,
1799.  [Apparently in ECCO.]

Joel

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