MARKHAM, Gervase.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Young Sportman's [sic] Instructor First edition thus, a compendium consisting of extracts from the section on angling in The Pleasures of Princes, from Hungers Prevention (on "low-belling" and other methods of bird-catching), Country Contentments (on hunting, coursing, dogs) and Markhams Method (poultry, etc.) The publisher was George Conyers, one of the most prominent chapbook publishers of the period.This first edition is rare, with no copy in the British Library. ESTC locates one copy only in the UK, at the Bodleian, and four in North America: Harvard, Houghton Library; Princeton; Yale University Center for British Art; and Beinecke. The second edition (of 1712?) is almost equally rare.A manuscript note on the front free endpaper verso gives the ownership as E. A. Hunter, 13 Angel Hill, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, noting its gift to him by Coleman in 1874. The recipient, Edmund Arthur Hunter (1866-1937), was eight years old at the time; his father was a wine merchant. The note claims that "This book originally belonged to Lord Byron's grandson, by whom it was given to Rushbrook, who gave it to Coleman." If this story is true, the most likely candidate for first owner in this chain of provenance is Ralph Gordon King Noel Milbanke, 2nd Earl of Lovelace (1839-1906).

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.