“FIFTY YEARS AFIELD WITH A FOWLING PIECE”: LIMITED DERRYDALE EDITION OF BIGELOW’S STORIES OF THE SHOOT, “PANSY” IRELAND’S COPY

BIGELOW, Horatio (“Rashe”). Gunnerman. New York: Derrydale Press, (1939). Octavo, original textured red cloth gilt. $375.

Limited Derrydale Press first edition of this anecdotal account of the “actions” of Hal Sheldon and Archie Rutledge, “headliners in the shooting field today,” number 292 of only 950 copies, illustrated with 17 pages of photographs. From the library of sportswoman “Pansy” Ireland.

“Sportsmen whose gunning experiences began in the great days of a half century ago are becoming rare, and of those remaining only a few can remember what the times were really like and can describe them as Rashe Bigelow does it… Rashe is preeminent as a story teller. Unless you have heard him in his own voice and person, with a glass of toddy in his hand and ‘going good’ you will find these sketches all that you can hope for” (Harold P. Sheldon). This wide-margined edition of Bigelow’s “stories” was printed at the famed Derrydale Press by its founder Eugene Connett. After studying the typography of Daniel Berkeley Updike, avid sportsman Connett founded the Derrydale Press, with the intent “to reprint the very scarce early American books on sport which had become so rare that some of them would never be seen outside of a few private collections… and to produce a group of books on contemporary American sport which, because of their beauty, would be preserved.” Owner signature, dated 1939, of renowned animal breeder, sportswoman, and collector of sporting and equestrian books, Elisabeth Ireland Poe (“Miss Pansy”), last of the Hanna heirs and mistress of Georgia’s famed hunting lodge Pebble Hill, touted by Harper’s Magazine as “the best winter resort on three continents.”

A fine copy, with only a small bit of tape residue to endpapers.