[HOWITT, Samuel ([?]1765-1822, artist)]. Foreign Field Sports ... With a Supplement of New South Wales, London, 1819, folio, 110 fine hand-coloured aquatint plates by Howitt and others, FINELY BOUND in contemporary scarlet morocco gilt. Second edition.

[HOWITT, Samuel ([?]1765-1822, artist)], and others.  Foreign Field Sports, Fisheries, Sporting Anecedotes .... From Drawings by Messrs. Howitt, Atkinson, Clark, Manskirch. With A Supplement of New South Wales. Containing One Hundred and Ten Plates. London: "Published and Sold by H. R. Young", with imprint "Printed by J. M'Creery, Black-Horse-Court, London" on verso of title, 1819 [but plates dated 1813]. Folio (328 x 230mm). 110 fine hand-coloured aquatint plates by Samuel Howitt and others (the first plate offset onto title, occasional offsetting of other plates onto text and some very light mainly marginal spotting and staining). FINELY BOUND in contemporary straight-grained scarlet morocco gilt [unsigned] with borders decorated in gilt and blind, gilt edges (very skilfully and inconspicuously rebacked preserving original spine, extremities rubbed, some light scuffing). Second edition. "The plates illustrate every kind of hunting, trapping and adventure. Some are so theatrical as to be almost comic - witness the picture of the Indian bobbing up in the waves beside the turtle. Among the plates are a valuable set of thirteen in gay colours, illustrating a bull-fight. The artists employed were J. H. Clark, S. Howitt, and F. Mansckirch, a German painter who resided for some ten years at this period in England. The engravings are almost entirely by Dubourg, whose name appears alone or in conjunction with another on over seventy of the hundred plates. His principal helpers were Howitt and Merke. To quote the enticing words of another bookseller's catalogue, 'every plate is worthy of framing.' There is a supplementary series of ten plates dealing with Field Sports ... of New South Wales, dated 1813, with ten plates by J. H. Clark. A second edition of the whole appeared in 1819, 'published and sold by H. R. Young' ..." (Hardie). Abbey Travel 2; not in Brunet; Ferguson Bibliography of Australia 739; Hardie English Coloured Books p.136; Nissen ZBI 2019; Schwerdt I, p.179: "... the most beautiful book on Indian sport in existence ..."; Slater Illustrated Sporting Books p.49; Tooley 225; Wantrup Australian Rare Books 1788-1900 p.280: "[The ten plates of the New South Wales supplement include] without doubt the most attractive and sympathetic of the early European depictions of the native inhabitants."