BRITISH AND AMERICAN SPORTING AUTHORS: THEIR WRITINGS AND BIOGRAPHIES. By A. Henry Higginson. With a bibliography by Sydney R. Smith and Foreword by Ernest R. Gee.

1949 1st edition. 4to (222 x 285mm). Ppxviii,443. B/w photographs and illustrations. Green buckram, hound motif to upper board, spine titled in gilt.

This book give biographical essays describing the lives and work of the most significant sporting authors of the British Isles and North America. The essays are arranged chronologically beginning with Edward, Duke of York (The Master of Game) and George Turbervile. The bulk of entries concern the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and all but a handful of the then extant authors were born in the nineteenth century. Notables include William Somerville, Peter Beckford, Charles Apperley ("Nimrod"), R.S. Surtees, Thomas Smith, F.P. Delme Radcliffe, William Henry Herbert ("Frank Forester"), Lord North, E.OE. Somerville and many others. The emphasis is on fox-hunting authors, but there is a great deal of overlap with other field sports, and with angling*. This copy has a signed inscription from the author "To Major J. Fairfax-Blakeborough, with many thanks for his help without which this book might never have been written. A. Henry Higginson, March 1950". Also, tipped-on to the front end-paper, unfortunately upside-down, is a typed, signed and inscribed letter from Higginson to Fairfax-Blakeborough, dated 2nd of March 1950, again thanking him for his help with the book and expressing hope that it might some day be published in the UK... which it was a year later. A nice association copy.