It is a little like steam engine time, but more boring.
Last week was a fairly busy week. This week is shaping up to be less packed, and with the time change, I have more daylight to work with. Which means I may be able to get some pictures for part two of “Day of the .45”, and for another project I’m working on. In the meantime, after the jump and as foretold in the prophecy, more bibliographies…
Both of these were mentioned in Jim Casada’s introduction to the Palladium Press C.S. Landis reprint I wrote about previously. As it turns out, both were very reasonably priced on ABEBooks.
A Bookman’s Guide to Hunting, Shooting, Angling, and Related Subjects: a compilation of over 13,450 catalog entries with prices and annotations, both bibliographical and descriptive, Richard A. Hand, The Scarecrow Press, 1991.
The good news: I paid $25 for this one (plus tax and shipping, total $31.39) from an ABEBooks seller. The bad news: I don’t know what to make of it.
It is a big book (1,176 pages) and is in pretty much “as new” shape. I’ve got no complaints there.
Here’s the entry on a book from the previous post: Advanced Gunsmithing by W.F. Vickery.
I don’t care about the price data: this is a 32 year old book, and I didn’t expect the price data to be correct.
But: which one of these is the true first, and which one is a reprint?
There’s no mention of either William Reichenbach book. Those are just a couple of examples I’ve found so far.
I’m not saying I think the book is worthless: I think it is worth having at this price. But I am giving the non-price information in it a little bit of a side-eye.
A Bibliography of American Sporting Books 1926-1985, M.L. Biscotti (forward by Gene Hill). Meadow Run Press, 1997.
Isn’t that a good looking book? It came in a slip case, too. 573 pages, organized by author (rather than chronologically) with a title index and…”References Cited”! More bibliographies! (Hand’s book is listed. So is Smith’s.)
I like this one a little better. It doesn’t have the price data, but I think it is easier to read. Here’s his entry on the Vickery book.
It does overlap some with the Riling bibliography (also cited) but since it leaves off at 1985 while Riling ends at 1950, this fills that pesky 35 year gap, and ends right around the time I became an adult. (Okay, I realize some of you might argue that last point.)
Also, I really like that John Rice art.
Bought for $45 + tax + shipping for a total of $53.05 from another ABEBooks seller, and is in pretty much like new shape. The back pages state that this is one of 1,000 copies, but it isn’t numbered. There was a deluxe edition “forthcoming”, but I don’t see it represented on ABE if it was ever printed. If you want your own copy, you can get it for more or less the same price I paid.
The author has done a couple of even more esoteric bibliographies: British Sporting Periodicals: An Annotated Bibliography and Six Centuries of Foxhunting: An Annotated Bibliography are among his other works. I wouldn’t mind owning those, but perhaps at some point down the road. (I know this may ruin some people’s image of Lakeway, but, sadly, we do not ride to the hounds out here. Or if we do, I don’t get invited on the hunts.)
Next time: I have three more books in the queue currently that I want to cover, but I think my entries on those will be short, so I may try to cover them all in one entry. But I want to get part two of the .45 post done first.