Delineations of British Field Sports,

the Schwerdt copy

'The coloured issue ranks as one of the rarest sporting books of the period. There is only a record of a second coloured copy, which is untraceable' (Schwerdt). Delineations... is the only book published by Samuel Alken, Henry Thomas Alken's brother; it was first issued in six monthly parts in wrappers (no copy known), and then in book form in two states: uncoloured on drab paper, as Mellon, or the more luxurious issue with coloured lithographs on white paper, as here. Schwerdt notes that the vigorous style of these plates made them eminently suitable for framing, and accounts in part for their rarity; 'twenty years' search has not enabled us to make up a complete set'.

Later in the collection of Hugh Auchincloss, attorney and power broker, and stepfather to both Gore Vidal and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Not in the British Library; not in Abbey, Dixon, or Tooley. WorldCat locates just one copy, the Mellon copy, at Yale's Sterling Library; that one uncoloured and on grey paper.

First edition, oblong folio (28.6 x 45.6 cm); 24 hand-coloured lithographs, plate 13 just trimmed by the binder, shallow crease in the first plate, a few short marginal tears of which one repaired, faint stain in the top margin of the first few leaves; later red half morocco, spine gilt in compartments, sides with gilt double fillet, top edge gilt, marbled endpapers (extremities rubbed, boards spotted, light soiling), a very good copy.