COMPLETE SET - THE PHILLIPS COPY
The Cabinet of Natural History and American Rural Sports.
Philadelphia: J. & T. Doughty, 1830-1833.
Price: $10,000.00
About the item
First edition. Engraved frontispiece portraits of Charles Wilson Peale and William Bartram and engraved titles to each volume, Engraved plate in Vol III, "Death of the Fox". With 54 hand-colored lithographs. vii, [i], 298, [2, Index] ; vii, [i], 292, [2]; 96 pp. 3 vols. 4to. COMPLETE SET - THE PHILLIPS COPY. Contemporary half calf and half morocco. Last two volumes have the bookplates of Samuel Appleton and E.O. Bangs. First 100 pages of volume I quite browned, as are the first and last leaves of volume II. Volume III very clean, the Wild Turkey plate is present and skillfully colored. Phillips p. 69; Reese, American Color Plate Books, #12; Gee, Early American Sporting Books, pp.48-49; Henderson p.37; Howes D433: Litchfield 19; Bennett 35; Biscotti, Six Centuries of Foxhunting, p. 117. Provenance: John Phillips Sale, American Art Association, March 26, 1936, lot 55.
Item #240353
"A mine of information on contemporary sport and natural history" (Phillips).
A landmark of American sporting publication, issued in parts by the brothers Thomas and John Doughty. Subscriptions dwindled after Thomas departed for Boston, and the publication ceased with the 4th part of vol. III. Connett published a selection of articles, Some Early American Hunters (1928) as one of the early Derrydale Press titles.
"This was the first major book issued in the United States to be illustrated with hand-colored lithographic plates, preceded only by three minor books in the 1820s ... an amalgam of natural history, sporting accounts, travel narratives, and practical advice for the countryman" (Reese).
This set, while not uniform, has an interesting American sporting provenance, from the collection of John C. Phillips, sportsman and author of A Natural History of the Ducks (1922-1926) and the Bibliography of American Sporting Books (1930).
