Pierce Egan's Anecdotes (Original and Selected)

London: Printed for Knight & Lacey...and Pierce Egan, 1827. The 19th Century's Wide World of Sports:
The Thrill of Victory, The Agony of Defeat
Scarce In Original Boards
This Copy Can't Be Beat

EGAN, Pierce. LANE, Theodore, illustrator. Pierce Egan's Anecdotes (Original and Selected) of The Turf, The Chase, The Ring, and the Stage; The Whole Forming a Complete Panorama of the Sporting World; Uniting with it a Book of Reference and Entertaining Companion to the Lovers of British Sports. Embellished with Thirteen coloured Plates, designed from Nature, and etched by Theodore Lane.London: Printed for Knight & Lacey...and Pierce Egan, 1827.

First edition. Quarto (10 1/16 x 6 1/4 inches; 256 x 159 mm). viii, 304 pp [A-Z4, 2A-2Q4]. Thirteen hand colored aquatint plates, including frontispiece. The plates other than the frontispiece are all bound after the "Directions to the Binder". Eighteen text wood-engravings. Four-page advertisement for Works Published by Thomas Tegg" bound in to front. Original ownership signature of E. Wright Band 0n front free-endpaper. With the engraved bookplate of Duncan Andrews on front paste-down.

Publisher's pictorial drab boards, front cover with three scenes in black and white, spine lettered in black. Spine head and tail expertly repaired at an early date. Otherwise an astonishing copy of a book scarcely found in its original state. Chemised in a quarter red morocco slipcase, spine with five raised bands, ruled in blind and lettered in gilt in compartments.

Of the twenty-two copies that have come to auction within the last thirty-six years, all but three were rebound and of those three two were rebacked, one of which lacked a plate. It is extremely difficult to find copies in the original boards; harder still to discover copies in the original boards without major condition issues.

At the foot of page 229 there is a manuscript note accompanying the text to An Interesting Sketch of John Harris, A Dog Breaker that reads: "Well known to E.W. Band having broken many pointers and Setters for him." Adjacent is another manuscript note identifying "a Reverend Gentleman" as Revd. Mr. Templar of Shapwick, i.e. George Henry Templar, vicar of Shapwicke from 1810 and owner of the rectory manor. Later an insolvent debtor, he was, none the less, according to Egan, "a crack shot."

This remarkable copy has been hidden away in a private collection for well over thirteen years, and prior to that in a private UK collection since 1980.

Abbey, Life 283; Tooley 194.