In a Hunting-Themed Binding
WILLIAMSON, Thomas; Samuel HOWITT, illustrator.
Oriental Field Sports; being a complete, detailed and accurate Description of the wild Sports of the East; and exhibiting, in a novel and interesting Manner, the natural History of the Elephant, the Rhinoceros, the Tiger, the Leopard, the Bear, the Deer, the Buffalo, the Wolf, the wild Hog, the Jackall, the wild Dog, the Civet, and other undomesticated Animals … Second Edition. London, J. McCreery for H. R. Young, 1819.
Two vols, large 4to, pp. I: xiv, [ii], 306; II: [iv], 239, [1 (blank)], [12 (index)], with an additional engraved title-page (oblong) and a total of forty hand-coloured etched plates of animals and hunting scenes (watermarked 1817); slightly toned, text leaves somewhat foxed throughout as always (the plates largely unaffected), dedication leaf in vol. I creased; a good copy in contemporary red straight-grained morocco, covers with a wide floriated border in gilt and blind, spine gilt in six compartments, lettered and numbered directly in two, the others with a gilt block of a tiger hunting a deer; edges a little rubbed, corners bumped.
Added to your basket:
Oriental Field Sports; being a complete, detailed and accurate Description of the wild Sports of the East; and exhibiting, in a novel and interesting Manner, the natural History of the Elephant, the Rhinoceros, the Tiger, the Leopard, the Bear, the Deer, the Buffalo, the Wolf, the wild Hog, the Jackall, the wild Dog, the Civet, and other undomesticated Animals … Second Edition.
Second quarto edition, one of the most beautiful of all hunting books, first published in 1805–7.
Williamson served over twenty years in Bengal, and his pig-sticking, tiger-shooting, and buffalo-hunting adventures are described here, with lively illustrations after his original sketches by the self-taught sporting artist Samuel Howitt (1756/7–1822). His early work showed a debt to Thomas Rowlandson, his brother-in-law, ‘but Howitt developed a more individual style as his career as a sporting artist progressed. He seems to have had an innate capacity for drawing animals, from commonplace hare and deer to exotic species that he studied in menageries. He was an animated draughtsman, and his drawings of hunts and sporting events have a fluidity and excitement fitting to the subject’ (ODNB).
The work was first published in twenty monthly folio parts for subscribers, with aquatint plates in 1805–7, and then in reduced size edition of 1807–8, with the plates etched by Evans. Both the folio and the quarto editions were reprinted in 1819.
Abbey, Travel 427 (1807); Czech, p. 228; Schwerdt II, p. 298 (1807 & 1808); Tooley 510.