COVET FOR YOUR SPORTING LIBRARY

Titles recommended to Field readers by Heywood Hill’s Rare Books Department

The Shooting Directory, by RB Thornhill Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, London, 1804; first edition, £595

Contains engraved diagrammatic plates of gun mechanisms (one of which is folding). Lacks pages 215-220, which were cancelled in the later two issues because, “the author had been a little too outspoken over a controversy concerning the Manton Patent Breech, that arose between Mr Manton and the Duke of Richmond”.

Trout Fishing from all Angles, by Eric Taverner London, Seeley, Service & Co, 1929; first edition, number 30 of 375 large paper copies, signed by the author, £1,500

Taverner has written widely on all aspects of modern fishing. This, a large work of some 450 pages, is one of the most complete studies of the subject ever made.

Savage Sudan: Its Wild Tribes, Big-game and Birdlife, by Abel Chapman Gurney and Jackson, London, 1921; first edition, £495

Chapman was a hunter-naturalist who maintained that the sport of big-game hunting and conservation could go hand in hand. He was instrumental in the establishment of the first game reserve in South Africa and is credited with saving the Spanish ibex from extinction. Contains 248 illustrations, chiefly from rough sketches by the author.

ALSO:

The Complete Sportsman; Or, Country Gentleman’s Recreation, by Thomas Fairfax J Cooke, London, circa 1760; early edition, £495

With engraved frontispiece of a stag hunt, attractively hand-coloured. Contains a wealth of practical information on animal and game husbandry, horse racing, hunting, dog breeding, angling, shooting, fowling et al.

Alten Red Letter Days: the Salmon Fishing Diaries of Colonel Sir North Dalrymple-hamilton, by Roy Flury (editor and compiler), Cambridge, MA Privately printed at the Ascencius Press, Maine, by Charles B Wood III, 2009; first, standard edition, number 93 of 150 copies, £225

Finely printed and well-illustrated edition of these diaries on the sporting waters of Alten in northern Norway, leased to the Colonel’s friend, the Duke of Roxburghe. The diaries cover 1913, 1920-23, and 1929, with a chapter on subsequent trips.

For more rare sporting book suggestions, readers might consult CFGR Schwerdt’s Hawking, Hunting, Shooting, Illustrated in a Catalogue of Books, Manuscripts, Prints and Drawings, 4 Volumes, 1928 and 1937 (the fourth volume published at the later date).