Two Centuries Of Foxhunting

Hunting literature had its beginnings as early as the fourteenth century, when nobles hunted stag, bear, fox, and other game on horseback. As foxhunting grew in popularity, literary works that covered the sport flourished, as well. In Six Centuries of Foxhunting: An Annotated Bibliography, M. L. Biscotti has compiled all books produced in Great Britain and the United States that pertain to, or mention, foxhunting with hounds. Arranged alphabetically by author, more than 2000 titles are included. Each entry features details such as place and year of publication, publisher, book size, page count, illustrations, and binding. Nearly every title is also annotated with a description of the book’s contents, and biographical sketches are provided for the most notable authors. Narratives, histories, illustrated works, verse, fiction, and even anti-hunting literature all have their place in this volume. Six Centuries of Foxhunting also features more than thirty images of book covers and foxhunting illustrations. With appendixes that contain author, title, and illustrator time lines, and separate author and title indexes, this comprehensive bibliography is a valuable resource for researchers, book dealers and collectors, and foxhunters.

August 1781 saw the publication of a manual on fox hunting that would become a classic of its genre. Hugely popular in its own day, Peter Beckford's Thoughts on Hunting is often cited as marking the birth of modern hunting and continues to be quoted from affectionately today by the hunting fraternity. Less stressed is the fact that its subject was immediately controversial, and that a hostile review which appeared on the heels of the manual's publication raised two criticisms of fox hunting that would be repeated over the next two centuries: fox hunting was a cruel sport and a feudal, anachronistic one at that. This study explores the attacks made on fox hunting from 1781 to the legal ban achieved in 2004, as well as assessing the reasons for its continued appeal and post-ban survival. Chapters cover debates in the areas of: class and hunting; concerns over cruelty and animal welfare; party politics; the hunt in literature; and nostalgia. By adopting a thematic approach, the author is able to draw out the wider social and cultural implications of the debates, and to explore what they tell us about national identity, social mores and social relations in modern Britain.

August 1781 saw the publication of a manual on fox hunting that would become a classic of its genre. Hugely popular in its own day, Peter Beckford's Thoughts on Hunting is often cited as marking the birth of modern hunting and continues to be quoted from affectionately today by the hunting fraternity. Less stressed is the fact that its subject was immediately controversial, and that a hostile review which appeared on the heels of the manual's publication raised two criticisms of fox hunting that would be repeated over the next two centuries: fox hunting was a cruel sport and a feudal, anachronistic one at that. This study explores the attacks made on fox hunting from 1781 to the legal ban achieved in 2004, as well as assessing the reasons for its continued appeal and post-ban survival. Chapters cover debates in the areas of: class and hunting; concerns over cruelty and animal welfare; party politics; the hunt in literature; and nostalgia. By adopting a thematic approach, the author is able to draw out the wider social and cultural implications of the debates, and to explore what they tell us about national identity, social mores and social relations in modern Britain.

Excerpt from A Century of English Fox-Hunting A preface must to a certain extent partake of the nature of an autobiography, and I fear that the majority of readers regard autobiographies with suspicion. Moreover, there are few books which require a preface to the first edition, though in subsequent editions it is only fair that the author should have an opportunity of making explanations in cases where he has been misunderstood. Nor, beyond acknowledging the kind help which I have received from friends and acquaintances, should I have made any prefatory remarks to the following pages, if it were not that I have been urgently persuaded to do so by those whose literary experience is far greater than my own. I have often heard it stated that the character of a book reflects the character of the author, and such undoubtedly must be the case when the book has any claim for originality. But in a work which only pretends to a moderate degree of research there can be little if any index to the character of the author, who accordingly should not be accused of personal vanity for writing a preface. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.