The Sport of Our Ancestors: Being a Collection of Prose and Verse Setting Forth The Sport of Fox-Hunting As They Knew It

Description:

First edition. Illustrated by G.D. Armour. A handsome and evocative anthology celebrating the traditions, language, and literature of English fox-hunting. The volume gathers together prose and verse from earlier centuries, offering a nostalgic portrait of rural sporting life as recorded by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers. Drawing on memoirs, sporting songs, poems, and anecdotal accounts, the work preserves the atmosphere of the hunting field at a moment when many of its customs were already passing into history. The selection is enhanced by illustrations from George Denholm Armour, whose drawings complement the text’s celebration of horsemanship, hounds, and countryside tradition.

Issued in the immediate post-First World War period, the book reflects the wider revival of interest in England’s rural and aristocratic heritage that characterised much sporting literature of the early twentieth century.

Condition

8vo, half leather, raised bands, gilt-tooled decorations to compartments, two leather title pieces, top edge gilt other edges uncut. Marbled endpapers, some light foxing. Book plate of Arthur Ewart Marnham (1890-1976) Lieutenant Colonel Royal Garrison Artillery. Vg