Memoirs of the Life of the Late John Mytton, Esq. of Halston, Shropshire

An Astonishing Copy
"A Most Valuable and Important Book"
Second and Best Edition
With Additional Text and Six Extra Hand-Colored Plates

[ALKEN, Henry, artist]. NIMROD (pseud. of C.J. Apperley). Memoirs of the Life of the Late John Mytton, Esq. Formerly M.P. for Shrewsbury, High Sheriff for the Counties of Salup & Merioneth, and Major of the North Stropshire Yeomanry Cavalry. With Notices of His Hunting, Shooting, Driving, Racing, Eccentric and Extravagant Exploits By Nimrod. With Numerous Illustrations by H. Alken and T.J. Rawlins. Second Edition. Reprinted with considerable Additions from the New Sporting Magazine. London: R. Ackermann, 1837.

Second and enlarged edition, with additions to the text and six extra hand-colored plates. Tall octavo (9 7/8 x 5 3/4 in; 240 x 146 mm). ix, [3], 206, [2], [8], as publisher's catalog] pp. Extra-engraved title page. Eighteen hand-colored aquatint plates.

Publisher's original green pebbled cloth with large trophy vignette in gilt enclosing title, and gilt lettered spine with dog and rabbit gilt stamps bordering title and "1837" in gilt at foot. All edges gilt. Yellow endpapers. An astonishing copy, the finest extant - as bright, fresh and crisp as one could possibly hope for with only the slightest of wear and occasional spots of foxing to plate margins. Housed in a full deep blue morocco solander case by Sangorski & Sutcliffe.

"A most valuable and important book for the sporting life of the period, aptly described by Newton as 'a biography of a man that reads like a work of fiction'" (Tooley).

"This is not a work of fiction, for John Mytton, a rather inglorious character for a biography, was a hard-living, hard-drinking country squire of Halston, Shropshire, capable of the utmost physical endurance, and ready to accept any wager to walk, shoot or ride against any man. Many of his feats are recorded and graphically delineated, including the climax of his folly in setting his nightshirt on fire to cure a hiccough (Martin Hardie).

The Plates:
1. Well done, Neck or Nothing...
2. A Nick, or the nearest way home.
3. Wild Duck Shooting.
4. What! Never upset in a gig?
5. I wonder whether he is a good timber jumper!
6. The Meet with Lord Derby's Stag Hounds.
7. Stand and deliver.
8. Tally ho! Tally ho!...
9. The Oaks Filly.
10. Light come, light go.
11. On Baronet clears nine yards of water.
12. D--n this hiccup!
13. A h-ll of a row in a hell...
14. Swims the Severn at Uppington Ferry.
15. How to cross a country comfortably after dinner.
16. Heron shooting...
17. A Squire trap, by Jove!
18. Now for the honour of Stropshire.

Abbey, Life, 385. Tooley 66. Schwerdt 1, p. 38. Martin Hardie, pp. 185-186. Prideaux, p. 326.

Price: $3,500

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