"The present is a critical time in the fortunes of the game of croquet. After suffering almost total annihilation for nearly twenty years, it is showing unmistakable signs of a strong and vigorous recrudesence. The last three years has seen well attended meetings at Maidstone, Bristol, Bath, Budleigh, Salterton, and even Wimbleton. An All-England Croquet Association has been formed with a strong committee and Mr. Walter Peel for its secretary. This Association has held meetings under its auspices, and has, as a result of severl sittings of a specially appointed committee, issued a revised and authoritative edition of the laws of the game. There is just now, in fact, a boom in croquet. The appearance of anything in the nature of a text-book at such time cannot fail to be a matter of the gravest moment. If the book is good -- as good, say, as Mr. Hutchenson's Golf in the Badminton Series -- it would give the game such an impetus as would clear it effectively and forever, of the Slough of Despond from which it is emerging. Should the book, however, fail to come up to the required standard -- if it should be weak, inconsistant, verbose -- it would certainly do a disservice to the game which might prove irrepairable.

"It is therefore with a very mixed feelings that I examined Croquet: Its History, Laws, and Secrets, by Arthur Lillie (Longmans, 1897). The author is a gentleman who has been familiar with the subject since before the period of croquet's first ..."