''How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup'' is the fourth novel by
J. L. Carr
Joseph Lloyd Carr (20 May 1912 – 26 February 1994), who called himself "Jim" or "James", was an English novelist, publisher, teacher and eccentric.
Biography
Carr was born in Carlton Miniott in the North Riding of Yorkshire, next to Thirsk ...
, published in 1975. The novel is a comic fantasy that describes in the form of an official history how a village football club progressed through the
FA Cup to beat
Rangers
A Ranger is typically someone in a military/paramilitary or law enforcement role specializing in patrolling a given territory, called “ranging”. The term most often refers to:
* Park ranger or forest ranger, a person charged with protecting and ...
in the final at
Wembley Stadium.
Like all of Carr's novels, it is grounded in his own experience. In 1930 as an unqualified 18-year-old teacher he played a season for
South Milford
South Milford is a village and civil parish in the county of North Yorkshire, England. The civil parish includes the hamlet of Lumby, located south-west of the main village.
The village was historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire un ...
White Rose when they won a football knockout tournament. It sold 2,124 copies. Carr bought back the rights to the novel in 1992 and reprinted it in an edition of 2,000 copies as the fourth novel published by his own imprint,
The Quince Tree Press
The Quince Tree Press is the imprint established in 1966 by J. L. Carr to publish his maps, pocket books and novels.Carr, J. L. (1987) ''An Inventory and a History of the Quince Tree Press to mark its 21st year and the sale of its 500,000th small ...
.
Adaptations
The novel has been dramatised several times by different playwrights. In 1991, it was adapted as a play for eight actors and was performed at the Worcester Swan Theatre, the Leatherhead Thorndike Theatre and the
Mermaid Theatre, London where it ran for six weeks, with Simon Coates as Joe Gidner.
[Carr, J.L. (1991) ''The Passport Interview''. Huntingdon, Cambridge: Passport magazine, issue 2.] More recently it was dramatised by Brian Wright for performance by an amateur youth theatre, with a cast of sixty, in
Northamptonshire.
The play was performed at the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as The Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, or Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest arts and media festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 dif ...
in August 2011 by one actor, Mark Jardine of
Lichfield Garrick Theatre Repertory Company, who provided all the voices and characterisations. In this version the beaten finalists were
Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Publishing history
* 1975
London Magazine Editions
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major se ...
,
* 1986
Grafton Books
Grafton was a British paperback imprint established 1981 by Granada Publishing Ltd, a subsidiary of media company Granada Group Ltd. It was named after the publishing company's then address, 8 Grafton Street, in central London. Other paperback ...
,
* 1992
The Quince Tree Press
The Quince Tree Press is the imprint established in 1966 by J. L. Carr to publish his maps, pocket books and novels.Carr, J. L. (1987) ''An Inventory and a History of the Quince Tree Press to mark its 21st year and the sale of its 500,000th small ...
,
* 1999
Prion Humour Classics ''Prion Humour Classics'' are a series of small-format hardback novels published by Prion Books in the UK published by Barry Winkleman.
References
{{reflist, colwidth=30em
Lists of novels ...
,
Prion Books,
* 2003
The Quince Tree Press
The Quince Tree Press is the imprint established in 1966 by J. L. Carr to publish his maps, pocket books and novels.Carr, J. L. (1987) ''An Inventory and a History of the Quince Tree Press to mark its 21st year and the sale of its 500,000th small ...
,
* 2016
Penguin Modern Classics
Penguin Classics is an imprint of Penguin Books under which classic works of literature are published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean among other languages. Literary critics see books in this series as important members of the Wester ...
, . Reissued 7 April 2016.
Translations
*2008 ''Come gli S.S. Wanderers vinsero la coppa d’Inghilterra'', Fazi Editore, Roma,
*2017 ''Wie die Steeple Sinderby Wanderers den Pokal holten'', DuMont Buchverlag, Koln. Translated by Monika Köpfer.
*2018 ''Cómo llegamos a la final de Wembley'', Tusquets Editores S.A., Spain,
References
{{reflist
External links
Quince Tree Press
1975 British novels
Novels by J. L. Carr
British sports novels
Novels about association football