[NIMROD (Charles James Apperley)]. Memoirs of the Life of The Late John Mytton, Esq. of Halston, Shropshire, M. P. for Shrewsbury, High Sheriff for the Counties of Salop & Merioneth, and Major of the North Shropshire Yeomanry Cavalry; with Notices of his Hunting, Shooting, Driving, Racing, eccentric, and extravagant exploits. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1869.
Hardcover. Fourth edition, revised and enlarged. Leather-bound. Tall octavo (250 x 160 mm.), pp. [xii], 234. With 18 splendid hand-colored plates, including the frontispiece, by Alken and Rawling. With an engraved extra title-page. Rebound in stunning full crimson morocco, unsigned but almost certainly by Bayntun. Gilt ruling and tooling to spine and covers. Inner gilt dentelles. All page edges gilt. Marbled endpapers. The original red cloth binding has been bound in at the back of the book. The Plates: 1. Well done, Neck or Nothing. 2. A Nick, or the nearest way home. 3. Wild Duck Shooting. 4. What! Never upset in a gig? 5. I wonder whether he is a good timber jumper! 6. The Meet with Lord Derby's Stag Hounds. 7. Stand and deliver. 8. Tally ho! Tally ho! 9. The Oaks Filly. 10. Light come, light go. 11. On Baronet clears nine yards of water. 12. D--n this hiccup! 13. A h-ll of a row in a hell. 14. Swims the Severn at Uppington Ferry. 15. How to cross a country comfortably after dinner. 16. Heron shooting. 17. A Squire trap, by Jove! 18. Now for the honour of Shropshire. Condition: NEAR FINE. Binding tight and secure, the hinges intact. The covers with minor handling marks only. Contents near pristine with light spotting to endpapers. Without previous ownership markings.
Note: "Apperley, [pseud. Nimrod], writer on sport, was said to have created the role of gentleman hunting correspondent. Writing at first under various pseudonyms (Acastus, Eques, and A), he published his first article for the Sporting Magazine as Nimrod in January 1822 and he subsequently usually used that nom de plume." (DNB). "A most valuable and important book for the sporting life of the period, aptly described by Newton as 'a biography of a man that reads like a work of fiction'" (Tooley). "This is not a work of fiction, for John Mytton, a rather inglorious character for a biography, was a hard-living, hard-drinking country squire of Halston, Shropshire, capable of the utmost physical endurance, and ready to accept any wager to walk, shoot or ride against any man. Many of his feats are recorded and graphically delineated, including the climax of his folly in setting his nightshirt on fire to cure a hiccough (Martin Hardie). [Abbey, Life, 385. Tooley 67. Schwerdt 1, p. 38. Martin Hardie, pp. 185-186. Prideaux, p. 326].
