British Sports and Sportsmen, Past and Present -

Circa 1913 - British Sports and Sportsmen, London - First Edition. Royal Edition, limited to 250 copies, of which this set is number 105.
Two large finely bound folios containing the biographies of 303 of leading British sportsmen from the eighteenth and (primarily) nineteenth centuries, practitioners of the hunt, polo, steeplechase, cricket, rugby, boxing, and other gentlemanly pursuits accompanied by approximately 300 full page photogravure portrait plates. With a fascinating introduction by Horace G. Hutchinson. Volume I covers Hugo Meynell 1735-1808 to The Hon. Egremont Lascelles 1825-1892; Volume II covers George Parr 1826-1891 to Henry Arthur, Viscount Chelsea 1868-1908.

Compiled and Edited by ‘
The Sportsman’. Two large folio volumes [39x29cm] . Profusely illustrated.  
More details

Price HK$ 8,000



The Borders and Beyond - Abel Chapman

1924 - Gurney and Jackson, London - First Edition
A bright copy of this informative work of field exploration and natural history in Northumberland and the Anglo-Scottish borderlands.

Hunter-naturalist Chapman includes chapters on the British red grouse, the wildfowl of the north east coast, a search for the ‘moorland nymph’, salmonology, seagulls, woodcocks and herons, ravens, and the otter, together with a commentary on ‘modern zoology’, and extensive particulars on the migrations and plumage-phases in certain waders, to which he gave the name ‘Globe-Spanners’.

Profusely illustrated throughout with seventeen wonderful colour illustrations (on fourteen plates) by W.H. Riddell, twenty one black and white plates, two folding maps, and 170 sketches by the author.
 
More details

Price HK$ 1,000



Sport on the Nilgiris and in Wynaad - F. W. F. Fletcher

1911 - Macmillan &, London - First Edition
‘Fletcher introduces both the terrain and the history of the Nilgiris and Wynaad regions in India, then provides big game chapters on a species-by-species basis. Each of these chapters features not only the natural history of the animals, but also the author's experiences hunting them. Included are chapters devoted to elephant, tiger, leopards, bison, beer, tahr, ibex, sambur, and other deer species.

Fletcher switched from a .450 rifle to a .600 Jeffery: “
In cold blood the recoil from his rifle is somewhat severe; but in the excitement of shooting it is not noticeable.”’ - Czech.

Illustrated with 18 plates, and folding coloured map as frontispiece.
 
More details

Price HK$ 2,200



1894 - Chapman and Hall, London - First Edition
A large and beautifully bound work Illustrated with eleven full page plates by Scottish wildlife artist Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935).

Augustus Grimble presents here his entertaining recollections and views on fishing and shooting in the highlands of Scotland.

Grimble was the first to call for a close time to the Salmon fishing season in Scotland after witnessing the alarming drop in catch, and rise in netting technology and quantity, as well as highlighting the threats of industrial sewage polluting the rivers and streams near cities.
 
More details

Price HK$ 6,000



The Game Birds of India, Burmah, and Ceylon - Allan Octavian Hume, Charles H. T. Marshall

1879-81 - Hume and Marshall, Calcutta - First Editions
A superb and thus rare example of this three volume work, in the original gilt decorated bindings, and containing the complete set of 144 colour plates. All three illustrated title pages are also present.

Hume, ‘
the Father of Indian Ornithology’, put together this work using contributions and notes from a network of 200 or more correspondents. Hume delegated the task of getting the plates made to Marshall. The chromolithographs of the birds were drawn by W. Foster, E. Neale, (Miss) M. Herbert, Stanley Wilson and others and the plates were produced by F. Waller in London. Hume had sent specific notes on colours of soft parts and instructions to the artists. He was unsatisfied with many of the plates and included additional notes on the plates in the book. This book was started at the point when the government demoted Hume and only the need to finance the publication of this book prevented him from retiring from service. He had estimated that it would cost £4,000 to publish it and he retired from service on 1 January 1882 after the publication. 
More details

Price HK$ 18,000



The Poetry of Sport - Hedley Peek (editor)

1896 - Longmans, London and Bombay - First Edition
‘Haste, ranger, to the Athol mountains blue! Unleash the hounds, and let the bugles sing! The thousand traces in the morning dew, the bounding deer,the black-cock on the wing, bespeak the rout of Scotland’s gallant king...from cairn of Bruar to the dark Glen-Morre, the forest’s in a howl, and all is wild uproar!’

A handsomely bound edition, with a distinctly Glaswegian accent, being bound in Glasgow and owned by the renowned medical Professor David Fyfe Anderson.

Containing a chapter on classical allusions to sport by Andrew Lang, and a lively preface to the Badminton Library by A.E.T Watson. Accompanied with illustrations by artists A. Thorburn, Lucien Davis, and C.E Brock, among others, this is a lovely compilation of poetry on the subject of sport for young men in the late eighteen-hundreds, primarily depicting activities such as fishing, hunting, and shooting.
 
More details

Price HK$ 3,000



1923-6 - Charles Scribner's Sons, New York - The National Edition
A finely bound twenty volume set of Roosevelt’s works. With additional notes to the beginning of each volume, sometimes biographical sometimes Roosevelt’s own notes.

Roosevelt was an historian, a biographer, a statesman, a hunter, a naturalist, and an orator. His prodigious literary output includes twenty-six books, over a thousand magazine articles, thousands of speeches and letters. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1906, in his position as President of the United States of America and collaborator of various peace treaties.
 
More details

Price HK$ 36,000