This club history preceded only by titles on Kilmarnock (1919), Queens Park (1920) and Rangers (1923). The earliest book dealing with a single Scottish club, although not concerning the game itself, was also about Hearts of Midlothian. It was titled 'The Hearts & The Great War', published in 1918 and written by John McCartney. McCartney’s, book offered photographic biographies of the seven players who died fighting in the Great War; it also details in the introduction that sixteen Hearts players, in total, joined up to fight, as well as some four hundred shareholders, ticketholders, and supporters. Together they formed, in the record time of eight days, a battalion, the 16th, of The Royal Scots – and this before subscription.
Hearts of Midlothian were formed in 1874 in the Gorgie district of Tynecastle and named from an old Edinburgh prison immortalised in Sir Walter Scott's novel 'The Heart of Midlothian'. Peter J.Seddon’s A Football Compendium comments that "this is a scarce and highly collectable early history".