Big Game Shooting

Two crown 8vo volumes; original brown pictorial cloth, backstrips with gilt lettering and maned lion and moose emblems; pp. xvi + 453 + adverts., x + 443; profusely illustrated with plates and drawings in text, including work by Charles Whymper. Cloth a bit rubbed; bookplate of R. E. Skyring Thomas to front pastedown and subsequent owner's signed name to free endpaper in each case; hinges a little tender; some browning, and scattered, generally moderate foxing. Good condition.

(Mendelssohn II, p. 632; Czech: An Annotated Bibliography of African Big Game Hunting Books 1785-1999, p. 220)  Volume I is very largely concerned with African hunting, and includes contributions by Samuel Baker, William Cotton Oswell, Frederick Jackson, and Frederick Selous.  It concludes with a brief consideration of North American hunting prospects.  Volume II explores hunting in the Arctic regions, in various parts of Europe and Central Asia, and, of course, India.  There are also chapters on camps, transport, rifles and ammunition, and taxidermy. "The Badminton Library presented British sport in its many manifestations from mountaineering and motoring to big-game hunting and dancing in a series of uniformly bound volumes.  Of special interest in the big-game volume is Oswell's contribution of 121 pages on sport in South Africa in the 1840s.  There are numerous incidents of hunting buffalo, lion, and elephant in the region of the Limpopo River.  David Livingstone was his companion on a journey to the Zambezi.  Frederick Jackson details sport in British East Africa, particularly with a species by species analysis including elephant, buffalo, rhinoceros, and lion.  Selous' chapter describes lion hunting in South Africa." - Kenneth Czech