When the Red Gods Call - Being the Biography of a Shikari in the Making

1935. First edition. 255pp., frontispiece and 26 black and white illustrations from photographs on 11 plates. We believe that Rawdon Malet was a pseudonym of Martin Stephens, and in this book he relates the shooting experiences of James Carmody Collingson, the elder son of a bank manager, who traveled to Baltistan, Tibet, Ladakh and other locales in search of wild game. A trophy ibex was collected, with additional successful hunts after gazelle, shapoo, burhel and other game. Descending into India's Central Provinces, Collingson bagged tiger, sambur and bear. The book is bound in the original red cloth covered boards with gold titling on the spine. white card with blue wraps and black titling with an illustration on the front cover. The case of the book is in good condition with shelf wear and some soiling to the boards and a black mark near the bottom edge of the front board. The spine is noticeably scuffed and the spine ends are bumped with a little damage to the cloth. There is a 1" split in the cloth on the front spine edge and 3" split on the rear spine edge, and both splits have a functional home repair using Japanese paper coloured to nearly match the cloth. The contents are tight and clean with scattered foxing. The foxing is mostly light although a few pages, including the title-page and some of the pages adjacent to the plates are a bit more heavily affected. The plates facing pages 112 and 192 protrude slightly from the fore edge of the text block, and may have been loose in the past and tipped-in again by a previous owner. Two names are written on the front free endpaper. …