Annals of Horsemanship
London: W. Dickinson, 1791. Item #02549
The Classic Lampoon Of Idiots On Horseback
[BUNBURY, Henry]. Gambado, Geofrey (pseud.). Annals of Horsemanship: Containing Accounts of Accidental Experiments and Experimental Accidents, Both Successful and Unsuccessful: Communicated by Various Correspondents to Geoffrey Gambado, Esq.…Together with Most Instructive Remarks Thereon, and Answers Thereto, by that Accomplished Genius. And Now First Published, by the Editor of the Academy for Grown Horsemen. Illustrated with Cuts by the Most Eminent Artists. London: Printed for W. Dickinson, 1791.
First edition. Folio (12 3/4 x 8 3/4 in; 323 x 222 mm). xvii, 81, [1, adv.] pp. Frontispiece and sixteen line- and stipple-engraved plates, plain as issued without color option. Engraved by W.P. Carey after Bunbury's designs.
Early twentieth century half crimson hard-grained morocco over red cloth boards ruled in gilt. Spine with five raised bands decorated with gilt dots. Gilt-ruled compartments. An excellent copy.
A “singulier ouvrage” (Brunet) and wildly popular, Annals of Horsemanship was reprinted in the same year in Dublin, again in 1796, 1811, and once more in 1812 collected with Bunbury's other satire, The Academy For Grown Horsemen.
The engraved plates were designed by Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811). "Bunbury owed much during his lifetime to the charm of a genial nature, and to his position as a man of family and education. West flattered him, and Walpole enthusiastically compared him to Hogarth. He was the friend of Goldsmith, Garrick, and Reynolds, and the favourite of the Duke and Duchess of York, to whom in 1787 he was appointed equerry. All this, coupled with the facts that he was seldom, if ever, personal, and wholly abstained from political subjects, greatly aided his popularity with the printsellers and the public of his day, and secured his admission, as an honorary exhibitor, to the walls of the Academy, where between 1780 and 1808 his works frequently appeared… [They] are not without a good deal of grotesque drollery of the rough-and-ready kind in vogue towards the end of the last century¾that is to say, drollery depending in a great measure for its laughable qualities upon absurd contrasts, ludicrous distortions, horseplay, and personal misadventure." (DNB).
“’The lovers of humor were inconsolable for the loss of Hogarth, but from his ashes a number of sportive geniuses have sprung up, and the works of Bunbury [et al] have entertained us’ (Walker’s Hibernian Magazine, May 1790). Just at this time, one of these ‘sportive geniuses’ was at the height of his popularity. Of the many amateur caricaturists who flourished during the second half of the eighteenth century, Bunbury was undoubtedly the most famous. His talents for depicting humorous incidents of everyday life and manners established him as a master of the burlesque, and his reputation in social caricature rivaled that of Thomas Rowlandson or James Gillray.” ((Riely, John C. Horace Walpole and ‘the Second Hogarth’, in Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, Autumn, 1975, p. 28).
The Plates:
1. The Apotheosis of Geoffrey Gambado
2. Mr. Gambado Seeing the World in a Six Mile Tour Famed in History
3. Dr. Cassock F.R.S. T.P.Q. Inventor of the Noble Puzzle for Tumble Down Horses
4. The Puzzle for the Dog, The Puzzle for the Horse, The Puzzle for Turk, Frenchman, or, Christian
5.How to Make the Most of a Horse
6. How to Make the Least of Him
7. How to Do Things by Halves
8. Tricks Upon Travellers
9. Love and Wind
10. Me & My Wife and Daughter
11. How to Make the Mare to Go
12. How to Prevent the Horse Slipping his Girths
13. How to Ride Without a Bridle
14. A Daisy Cutter with his Varieties
15. The Tumbler, or its Affinities
16. A Horse with a Nose
17. How to Travel Upon Two Legs in a Frost
ESTCT12226, Brunet II, 1474.
Price: $1,250.00