Beschreibung:

ALKEN, Henry. The National Sports of Great Britain . London: Thomas McLean, 1820-1821.
ALKEN, Henry. The National Sports of Great Britain . London: Thomas McLean, 1820-1821. 2° (480 x 305mm). Hand-coloured aquatint frontispiece and 50 hand-coloured aquatint plates by J. Clark after Alken, parallel text in English and French. (Light offsetting to plates, 4 plates and 4 correspondng leaves of text with stain at outer margin, occasional marginal spots.) Contemporary straight-grained red morocco, covers with central emblem of a stag within a cartouche surrounded by an elaborate roll-tool and multiple fillet border in gilt and blind, spine in eight compartments with raised bands, lettered in the second, the remainder with repeat stag tool, gilt turn-ins and edges (corners bumped, other extremities lightly rubbed, upper joints a little tender). Provenance : Edward Huth (armorial bookplate) – purchased at the Flick sale, 15 May 1946. THE 'EXTREMELY RARE' FIRST ISSUE OF THE FIRST EDITION IN A CONTEMPORARY MOROCCO SPORTING BINDING . This is Alken's most ambitious work, and one of the great 19th-century colour-plate books, with 'aquatints of exceptional quality considered by many to be Alken's greatest achievement and one of Britain's finest sporting books' (Litchfield). The first issue frontispiece is dated 1820 rather than 1821. The same stag tool appeared on the binding of the Schwerdt, Litchfield and Dixon-Gloucester copies (see Schwerdt IV, plt. 3 and Litchfield 14); it also occurs on the second issue Spitz copy, described in the next lot. The plates are watermarked 1818, 1819 or 1820, earlier than the Dixon copy whose 1822 watermarks are post publication. Dixon 26; Mellon/Podeschi 111; Schwerdt I, p. 19 & IV, p. 4; Siltzer p. 70; Tooley 41.