[Rarebooks] fa: SPORTING TOUR THROUGH FRANCE 1806 by COLONEL THORNTON - HUNTING &c. 2 Vols in 1

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, January 13. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/ahbb9pw

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


Colonel [Thomas] Thornton: A Sporting Tour through Various Parts of France, in the Year 1802: Including a Concise Description of the Sporting Establishments, Mode of Hunting, and Other  Field-amusements, as Practised in that Country. With General Observations on the Arts, Sciences, Agriculture, Husbandry, and Commerce: Strictures on the Customs and Manners of the French People; With a View of the Comparative Advantages of Sporting in France and England. In a series of letters to the Right Hon. the Earl of Darlington. To which is prefixed, an Account of French Wolf-hunting. [London:] Albion Press printed by J. Cundee for Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1806. Two volumes bound in one. Large 4to (30 x 24 cm) in period half calf and marbled boards, rebacked with the original spine laid down; page edges marbled; lxvi, 168, [6] pp; xii, 260, [12] pp.; with the half-titles for both vols., publisher's adverts; engraved plates and vignettes. Abbey, Travel 84.

ILLUSTRATIONS COMPLETE as listed in the binder's directions: 57 engraved plate leaves (including the frontispieces, engraved title-pages, and 2 engraved plates of music), 11 of which are folding, plus numerous engraved & woodcut vignettes. Binding with rubbing to the boards, bumping and wear to the corners; scattered spotting and toning to the plates, largely relegated to the margins; one plate damaged with a long tear, repaired and laid down on paper; one folding plate with a tear at the bottom of the fold; a few plates trimmed slightly at the margins (not affecting images); otherwise quite clean and sound, firmly bound. With a charming engraved nineteenth-century bookplate by illustrator Edwin Austin Abbey for Gardner Sebastian Bazley, inscribed within the plate: "To Gardner S. Bazley with the kind regards of E. A. Abbey Feb. 98", with the later ink stamp of Sir Thomas Bazley Bt., Hatherop Castle, Fairford, Glos.

Thornton's tour through France was conducted during the short-lived Peace of Amiens (1802-03), the one brief lull in more than two decades of war between England and France. The work is important not only as a sporting book, but also as a rare first-hand outsider's account of French life in the Napoleonic era.