Annals of Sporting, The

"Esteemed on Account of its Humorous Plates by Rowlandson" Rare In the Original Printed Boards [ROWLANDSON, Thomas, engraver]. QUISEM, Caleb (pseud.). The Annals of Sporting. London: Thomas Tegg, 1809. First edition. Twelvemo (6 3/4 x 4 in; 171 x 105 mm). [10], 104 pp., untrimmed. Hand-colored fold-out frontispiece engraved by Thomas Rowlandson after Henry Bunbury, hand-colored vignette title of a rider falling from Pegasus, and twenty-seven hand-colored etched plates including folding frontispiece) by Thomas Rowlandson after H. Bunbury,George Moutard Woodward, and possibly others. Publisher's original printed boards, expertly and almost invisibly rebacked with the original spine laid down. A superb copy, rare in the original printed boards. Housed in a fleece-lined black pebbled-cloth drop-back box. The plates include: "The Bucephalus Riding Academy for grown Gentlemen" (frontispiece); "How to Vault from the Saddle;" "The True Method of sitting on a Horse Mathematically Delineated;" "How a Man may Shoot his own Wig;" "The Maid of Mim;" "Costume of Hogs Norton" (two plates); "Game Wigs" (two plates); "Hounds" (two plates); "Mathematical Horsemanship" (six plates); "Fashionable Furniture at Hogs Norton" (two plates); and "The Bailiffs Hunt" (eight plates). Commonly rebound, the book is rather rare in the publisher's boards (original price 10s. 6d). The identity of "Caleb Quizem" has yet to be determined; he appears to have written only one other book, Economy: a Pindaric Tale in Three Parts (1811). "First edition of a coloured-plate Sporting-book, which is esteemed on account of its humorous plates by Rowlandson. Written in the form of 16 letters to, and answers by Mr. C. Quizem, Spelt Quisem on wrap [and boards]" (Schwerdt). Not found in Abbey, Tooley, nor, surprisingly, Siltzer. Schwerdt II, pp. 119-120 (rebound). Grego, Rowlandson the Caricaturist, p. 178. Falk, p. 216. Grolier, Rowlandson, 63.