History of Foxhunting

London: Macmillan. Very Good/Very Good. 1975. Hard Cover. 4to 30.8 x 24.2 x 2.6 cm 0333181344 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. 121 b/w illustrations. 16 pages of colour plates. 272 pages clean and tight. This history of the sport itself in Britain, Ireland and America is the central theme of this book, but foxhunting's full story goes back to prehistoric man and the ancient and medieval hunting of wild game for sport from which it evolved. Foxhounds were specially bred and entered in the England of Elizabeth I, but one of the earliest renowned packs was that of the Duke of Monniouth in the late 17th century. During the following ioo years modern foxhunting and the modern foxhound were developed, and the sport became popular as well as fashionable. Taken to the New World by English colonists, foxhunting became the elegant sport of Virginia and Maryland. George Washington's pack was as celebrated in Virginia as that of his contemporary Hugo Meynell in Leicestershire. After the American Civil War the great growth took place in the north with the formation of such famous clubs as the Myopia, near Boston, and the fashionable establishments of Long Island. Meanwhile, all over the South and Middle West, informal 'hill-topping',often on moonlight nights, was an entirely different sport with an entirely different kind of foxhound, just as passionately followed and just as lyrically described. Thousands of memorable personalities gallop across these pages, from the heroic to the ludicrous, from English dukes to Georgia 'fox-racers', from the Empress of Austria to the lovely and notorious 'Skittles'. Hunting costume, manners, parties, finance, language - hunting parsons, politicians, coal-miners - hunting novelists, journalists, poets - hunting saddles and bridles, horse-breeding and horsemanship - all have their place in the fabric of hunting history and of this book. The huge and fascinating subject of the hound is thoroughly explored: from the hounds of classical antiquity, through the great breeds of medieval France .