Author: [EGAN (Pierce)]:
Title: Sporting Anecdotes; Original and Select, including Characteristic Sketches of Eminent Persons who have appeared on the Turf: With an interesting Selection of the most extraordinary events which have transpire in the Sporting World; A correct Description of The Animals of Chase; and of every other subjected connected with the various Diversions of the Field. By an Amateur Sportsman.
Description: [London] Albion Press Printed, for J. Dundee..., and J. Harris..., no date. [1807]. 12mo, 172 x 98 mms., pp. xv [xvi blank], 379 [380 - 374 adverts], steel-engraved frontispiece, vignette on title-page, contemporary tree calf, spine richly gilt, red morocco label; spine split but intact, some slight wear to binding, with the aboreal bookplate of Thomas France on the front paste-down end-paper. The journalist and author (1772–1849) trained as a compositor, and his own works are shot through with his use of whatever font he might hope that his compositor would have to hand. HIs style was often self-conscious and liberally peppered with slang and curious locutions of the kind beloved by sports writers and, later, announcers for the next two centuries. Of a later edition of this work, Baldwin's London Magazine for 1820 remarked, "The author her has contrived to mass together all the particulars of Horse, Dog, and Man, worth of being known. It is a happy composition; full of whim and particular phrases, with a slip of morality in it, like a bit of lemon-peel in one's punch, and delightfully flavoured with the choicest lime juice of slang. Every leaf of the book glitters like a river in the sun" [Okay, okay; we get the point. Thank you.].

Keywords: sport anecdotes prose


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