HOBSON, William Colling.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Hobson's Fox-Hunting Atlas; Early, perhaps first, edition of this attractive atlas, the brainchild of the peripatetic map dealer William Colling Hobson, an obscure figure who struggled in the shadow of bankruptcy. It cleverly utilises lithographed versions of the Walkers' maps - originally published in Longman's British Atlas of 1837 - adding coloured stencils to identify the most notable hunts and black dots to mark their meeting places. None of the editions are dated, but Podeschi speculates that the earliest was issued in 1848. The ownership inscription in the present copy is dated 1852. Railways are featured, and this was the period of their rapid expansion, changing the face of the country and heralding the end of the age of coaching. It was also the age of the hugely popular sporting novelist Robert Smith Surtees, whose "sharp, authentic descriptions of the hunting field have retained their popularity among fox-hunters" (ODNB).Hobson appears to have led a precarious existence. In contemporary court reports, he is described as "late of the City of Dublin, but more late of Liverpool... Map-Seller, Horse Dealer, Dealer and Chapman". He published maps of Durham (1839) and Yorkshire (1843), but an ambitious map of Ireland on six sheets, dedicated to Queen Victoria, was assigned to Edward Holt after the copperplates were sold by auction at Sotheby's in 1837. From time-to-time, he was living in Liverpool, Manchester, and Newcastle, where in 1850 he is described as a "canvasser

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