Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana

Large folio (527 x 363 mm). 43 double-page engravings after Abraham van Diepenbeke, including 42 numbered 1-42, and the unnumbered 1658 title with Anvers imprint, engraved head-piece to first dedication, numerous woodcut illustrations throughout the text, and woodcut historiated and inhabited initials, head- and tail-pieces, and printer's ornaments. (Light marginal toning, some spotting.) Later half calf, contemporary marbled boards. Provenance: pencil notations in margins.

SECOND EDITION (FIRST ENGLISH), DELUXE LARGE PAPER ISSUE, with wide margins of Cavendish's classic 1737 treatise on equestrianism, with 43 splendid double-page engravings: "The illustrations are among the most beautiful to ever grace equestrian literature"(Ramsay) and "the only really outstanding work on the subject written by an Englishman" (Toole-Stott).

Though considered a country of horse lovers, England only produced one early master of classical riding: William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, who was a Royalist living in exile until the restoration of King Charles II. During his exile, Cavendish opened a riding school in Belgium and wrote the present work, La Méthode et Invention Nouvelle de Dresser les Chevaux. This text was the first of Cavendish's two important books on breeding and training horses, and was translated into French from his English manuscript and published in Antwerp in two issues: 1657 and 1658, though many of the 1657 title-pages have been altered by hand to read 1658. The first printing was largely incinerated by a fire in the bookseller's shop and is all but impossible to acquire.

Brunet I:1700; Graesse II:93; Huth 23; Lowndes 1663; Mennessier de la Lance II, p. 250; Nissen ZBI 848; Podeschi, Mellon Books on the Horse and Horsemanship, pp.26, 49. Ramsay, "Early Dressage Literature to 1800," IOBA, 6.9.03; Steinkraus, Introduction to A General System of Horsemanship, 2000; Toole-Stott, Circus and the Allied Arts: A World Bibliography 84. Wing N884-87.