SADDLE & SIRLOIN / THE DRUID / FINE ZAEHNSDORF BINDING

The Druid (Henry Hall Dixon).  SADDLE AND SIRLOIN, OR ENGLISH FARM AND SPORTING WORTHIES.  London: Rogerson and Tuxford, 1870.  12mo (approx 4.75 x 7”). (viii), 2, iv, 486, (4) pp.  Engraved frontispiece portrait and vignette title. Elegantly bound in three-quarter red Morocco over marbled boards by Zaehnsdorf with spine in six compartments separated by five raised bands, each compartment with either gilt lettering or decoration, gilt ruling on covers, T.E.G., ribbon marker. Marbled endpapers.

FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING.  Hardcover in custom leather Zaehnsdorf binding, without dust jacket (as issued).  Former owner's (Kenneth Baker Schley) printed bookplate on fep, otherwise a fine and exceptionally clean copy of this beautiful book.  FINE+.

Magnificent Zaehnsdorf binding in perfect condition.

"The title of this work should pretty well explain its nature. “Sirloin” speaks with ponderous emphasis for itself, and “Saddle” has a triple bearing on horses, sheep and pigs. It is, in fact, simply the record of what I have seen and heard during the last eleven years [c. 1858-1869] in the course of my summer rambles from Cumberland to Cornwall..." - (from the Preface).

Henry Hall Dixon (1822-1870) was an English sporting writer known by his nom de plume, "The Druid." He was born at Warwick Bridge, Cumberland, in 1822, and was educated at Rugby and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1846. He took up the profession of the law, but, though called to the bar in 1853, soon returned to sporting journalism, in which he had already made a name for himself, and began to write regularly for the Sporting Magazine, in the pages of which appeared three of his novels, Post and Paddock (1856), Silk and Scarlet (1859), and Scott and Sebright (1862). He also published a legal compendium entitled The Law of the Farm (1858), which ran through several editions. His other more important works were Field and Fern (1865), giving an account of the herds and flocks of Scotland, and Saddle and Sirloin (1870), treating in the same manner those of England. He died at Kensington in 1870.