Antiquarisch Boek - Surtees, Robert Smith - The Sporting Novels: 6 volumes - Verkocht

The Sporting Novels: Handley Cross, Hawbuck Grange, Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour, "Ask Mamma", Plain or Ringlets, Mr. Romford's Hounds. {Six volume set}

by Surtees, Robert Smith

London: Bradbury, Agnew & Co., c. 1890. 

Six octavo volumes. Printed from the plates of the original edition. (Previous owner's neat inscriptions to ffep dated 'December 1895'). Illustrated by John Leech, H.K. Browne, W.T. Maud, etc. Each vol. has a col. title-page vignette and a col. frontispiece with tissue guard; the set includes 92 full-page hand-coloured steel engravings, many full-page b & w wood engravings, and numerous illus. in the text. Top edges gilt, toning to page edges. Marbled endpapers, with browning to outer edges of free endpapers. Bound by Bayntun Riviere in half red morocco over red marbled cloth boards, five raised bands to spines, gilt lettering and sporting decorations within compartments. Very slight scuffing at some corners and spine heads. Bindings and interiors all in very good condition. A heavy set: 5,020 Kg. Each volume measure 23 cm x 15,5 cm.

HANDLEY CROSS; or Mr. Jorrocks's Hunt, Leech illustrations, 17 coloured, ix plus 550 pages; HAWBUCK GRANGE or the Sporting Adventures of Thomas Scott, Esq.; Browne and Maud illustrations, 9 coloured, xii unpaginated plus 265 pages; MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR, Leech illustrations, 14 coloured, xi plus 408 pages; "ASK MAMMA" or The Richest Commoner in England, Leech illustrations, 14 coloured, xii plus 412 pages;" PLAIN OR RINGLETS?", Leech illustrations, 13 coloured, xi plus 406 pages; MR. ROMFORD'S HOUNDS, Leech and Browne illustrations, 25 coloured, xi plus 405 pages. 

A very handsomely bound set of the works of Robert Smith Surtees, the great Victorian writer of hunting and sporting literature. "In 1838 Surtees published in book form a collection of his magazine articles featuring Mr Jorrocks, the 'jolly, free-and-easy, fox-hunting grocer' (to use Surtees's own description), under the title of Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities. A longer, more rounded Jorrocks novel, Handley Cross, appeared in 1843 and another, Hillingdon Hall, in 1845. Then came two insipid productions, The Analysis of the Hunting Field (1846) and Hawbuck Grange (1847), both revolving around fox-hunting but lacking plot or strong characterization. His first moderate success came with Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour (1853). This was followed by two novels of a different type, Ask Mamma (1858) and Plain or Ringlets? (1860), in which the sporting interest is only part of a broader picture of provincial society. Although these contain interesting social detail and some memorable characters, they too suffer from having no strong central figure to hold the plot together. His last book, published posthumously in 1865, was Mr Facey Romford's Hounds, which Surtees himself regarded as a good sequel to Mr Sponge and which some critics consider his best novel"