Description
The first edition of Memoirs of the Life of the Late John Mytton by “Nimrod,” also known as Charles James Apperley, published in 1835.
Octavo, vi, 110pp. Original brown cloth, title in gilt on front cover, lines stamped in blind. Light wear to cloth binding, a few dried marks on front cover, wear to tips. Brown endpapers. Faint toning to leaves. Previous ownership bookplates and inscriptions to front endpapers. Signed “John H. Spalding” and dated “Dec. 14, 1857” on front free endpaper. Complete with twelve hand-colored full-page plates, including frontispiece, drawn by Henry Alken, and hand colored by E. Duncan. Housed in custom chemise, full red morocco, title in gilt on spine with decorative raised bands. Chemise by Zucker & Henckel of Philadelphia.
(Schwerdt I, p. 38) (Abbey Life, 385) Provenance: Bookplate of George Gordon Massey. From the library of John M. Schiff, sold at Sotheby’s in 1990.
This work has been described as “a most valuable and important book for the sporting life of the period, aptly described by Newton as ‘a biography of a real man that reads like a work of fiction’.” (Tooley, 66). From Tooley: Though containing only 12 plates, this first edition is more desirable, and valued higher than the second edition, which contains 18 plates. Three plates of this first edition, namely 2, 8, and 9, did not appear in the second edition. The second, enlarged edition, was published in 1837. (Tooley, 67)
