The Analysis of the Hunting Field : Being a Series of Sketches of the Principle Characters that Compose One, The Whole Forming a Slight Souvenir of the Season 1845 - 6

New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1904. Printed paper spine label is chipped. Occasional foxing. Light fraying at head of spine else Very Good condition. Inner hinges are sound. Illustrated with 7 full-color plates and numerous b/w vignettes by Henry Alken. "Probably one of the finest colored title pages ever designed." -- A. Edward Newton. Reprint of this famous book on hounds and fox-hunting, first published in book-form by Rudolph Ackerman in England in 1846 (with prefaces dated 1846 and 1847). These papers appeared a season earlier in the periodical, Bell's Life in London. The author, Robert Smith Surtees (1803-1864), a close friend of William Thackeray and John Leech, is not identified in this 1904 American Edition. "It is well known that he never wrote under his own name and, at the time of his death, a critic in The Times Literary Supplement wrote: 'It is hard to think that any modern author of equal merit is so unknown as a personality, so hidden behind his books, as Robert Smith Surtees.'" - Higginson (p. 58). Not in Hand. See Higginson/Smith 432. See Tooley 470 and Hardie 187. Top edge gilt. Original maroon cloth. Full title: "The Analysis of the Hunting Field : Being a Series of Sketches of the Principle Characters that Compose One, The Whole Forming a Slight Souvenir of the Season 1845 - 6." . "New Edition". Hardcover. Near Very Good condition. Illus. by Alken, Henry . 12mo. 323pp .