77 ‘ThE moST BEAUTiFUL BooK on inDiAn SPoRT in ExiSTEncE’
284. WILLIAMSON, Captain Thomas and Samuel HOWITT (artist). oriental Field Sports; being a complete, Detailed, and Accurate Description of the Wild Sports of the East; and Exhibiting, in a novel and interesting manner, the natural history of the Elephant, the Rhinoceros, the Tiger, the Leopard, the Bear, the Deer, the Buffalo, the Wolf, the Wild hog, the Jackall, the Wild Dog, the civet, and other Undomesticated Animals: as Likewise the Different Species of Feathered Game, Fishes, and Serpents. The Whole interspersed with a variety of original, Authentic, and curious Anecdotes, which Render the Work Replete with infromation and Amusement. The Scenerey Gives a Faithful Representation of that Picturesque country, together with the manners and customs of both the native and the European inhabitants. The narrative is Divided into Forty heads, Forming collectively a complete Work. London: William Bulmer and Co. Shakspeare Printing Office for Edward Orme, 1807.
£19,500
oblong broadsheets (448 x 567mm), 20 parts in one volume. modern half calf gilt over contemporary marbled boards, retaining the original spine, gilt in compartments and lettered in one, modern mid-brown endpapers; pp. [4 (title, verso blank, dedication, verso blank)], ii (preface), 150, [2 (list of plates, verso blank), all text ll. watermarked ‘E&P | 1804’, except for dedication (‘J Whatman | 1804’) and l. 75, the last l. of index (‘Ruse & Turners | 1805’); additional title pochoir-stencilled in colours, watermarked ‘W Elga[r] | 1802’, and 40 hand-coloured plates, all aquatint except 2 stipple-engraved with aquatint and one soft-ground with aquatint by h. merke, J. hamble, and viveres after howitt’s drawings after Williamson, titled in English and French and numbered i-xL, plates i-viii, x-xvii, xxi, xxvi, xxviii, xxx-xxxi, xxxiii, xxxv, and xxxvii-xxxix watermarked ‘J Whatman | 1804’ and plates ix, xviii-xx, xxii-xxv, xxvii, xxix, xxxii, xxxiv, xxxvi, and xL watermarked ‘E&P | 1804’, additional [?proof] plate pochoir-stencilled in colours with design of additional title and with title text but without imprint text; boards slightly rubbed causing loss of paper on board-edges, some light browning, offsetting or marking, final ll. slightly creased, list of plates with short tear at gutter, additional [?proof] plate guarded in and with traces of old repairs to upper margin, additional title guarded in and with vertical crease with short tears, old marginal repairs on versos of l. 44 and plate xxii, nonetheless a very good copy of the work, with bright and fresh colour, and generous margins; provenance: ‘For my dear little friends at Wyarton G.T.G.-F. 20th Sep. 1893’ (inscription on front free endpaper).
First edition. ‘The most beautiful book on indian sport in existence’ (Schwerdt), bound up from the 20 original parts and therefore containing ‘the finest impressions of the plates’ (Tooley). Oriental Field Sports is composed of a frontispiece and forty fine hand-coloured aquatint plates, which were drawn by the keen sportsman and accomplished artist and etcher Samuel howitt (1756/7-1823) from the original designs by the Bengal Army officer captain Thomas George Williamson (circa 1760-1817), who also wrote the accompanying explanatory text. Williamson had travelled to india in 1778 aged about 19, and was commissioned into the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd European Regiment in 1779. For the following twenty years, Williamson served in the East india company’s Bengal Army in india and malaysia, before an ill-judged letter, which criticised Lord cornwallis’ plans for the army in india, was published in the calcutta Telegraph on 17 march 1798, under the pseudonym ‘mentor’. A modern historian characterises the letter thus: ‘Seething with at first barely concealed anger [Williamson] throws common sense to the winds as he covers page after page, and his manner of address develops from restrained hectoring to outright insult’ (o. Edwards ‘captain Thomas Williamson of india’ in Modern Asian Studies 14, 4 (1980), pp. 673-682 at p. 678), and an official investigation of the letter and (apparently) suppression of the ensuing issue of the journal followed swiftly. once Williamson was identified as the author, he was suspended by the army and sent home to England, not to be reinstated, although he was allowed, three years later, to retire on half-
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