GAMONIA: OR, THE ART OF PRESERVING GAME; AND AN IMPROVED METHOD OF MAKING PLANTATIONS AND COVERS EXPLAINED AND ILLUSTRATED.

(BINDINGS - BAYNTUN). (HUNTING). RAWSTORNE, LAWRENCE.

(London: Herbert Jenkins, 1929). 253 x 165 mm. (10 x 6 1/2"). 256 pp.With an Introduction and a Note on the Author's Game Register by Eric Parker. A New Edition.

VERY ATTRACTIVE HUNTER (of course) GREEN CRUSHED MOROCCO BY BAYNTUN for Sotheran's (stamp-signed on front turn-in), covers with gilt fillet border and lacy blind-stamped frame, center panel outlined in gilt, with blind-stamped ornament at head and foot, the panel with five rows of gilt ornaments on the theme of hunting--weapons, dogs, and prey--three to a row, 10 of them within blind-tooled circles, raised bands, spine compartments with gilt centerpiece of a hunter and his dog beneath a tree, curling volute cornerpieces, gilt lettering, turn-ins with gilt palmette roll, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. WITH 15 COLOR PLATES OF HUNTING SCENES "taken on the spot" by T. J. Rawlins. For the 1837 edition: Abbey Life 392; Schwerdt II, 127; Tooley 393. ◆Spine faintly sunned, frontispiece with light foxing, four other plates with a couple spots of foxing to margin, but quite a fine copy, with virtually no signs of use inside or out.

Entirely faithful to the 1837 first edition, this is a handsome later printing of a work Schwerdt describes as "an esteemed book," in which the scenes, mostly of shooting, "are unusually attractive, and convey a good impression of the way in which our forebears killed their game, in the beginning of the 19th century." Its main purpose, as Schwerdt observes, is as "a treatise on forestry, written with a view to laying out plantations in the way most suitable to game preservation." In the introduction here, Eric Parker, Shooting Editor of "The Field," writes, "'Gamonia' is valuable not only for its rarity and charm," but also as "the first treatise devoted solely to the subject of pheasant rearing, covert shooting, and the management of woodlands for the special purpose of preserving game." While Rawstorne outlines new methods for managing shooting estates, "his desire is still to stand in the old ways, and we can see much of what is in [Rawstorne's] mind in the treatment of the subjects he has chosen for illustration: in the quiet ridicule of the unskilled, in the hint of knowledge of how the thing could and should be done; in the cold and snow in which he likes to set his sportsmen seeking their quarry, and in the serenity of sunlight in which in each drawing stands Penwortham, his home." The original edition of this work was printed for the author by Rudolph Ackermann, and, according to Parker, "only a few copies" were printed and distributed as gifts of the author. The elaborately decorated sporting binding by the illustrious Bayntun workshop incorporates images of hounds and retrievers, rabbits and pheasants, and the guns used by the hunters. The whole production evokes shooting weekends at country houses before the Great War. This work was also issued in 1929 in a limited edition of 125, bound in publisher's morocco, but that edition's rather plain binding is a quiet forest next to the design of our own volume, distinguished as it is by so much spirited ferality. (ST18716)

Price: $450.00