Richard Blome

[RICHARD BLOME]
The Gentlemans Recreation. In two parts. The first being an Encyclopedy of the Arts and Sciences ... the second part treats of Horsemanship, Hawking, Hunting, Fowling, Fishing and Agriculture. With a Short Treatise of Cock-Fighting. London: S. Roycroft for Richard Blome, 1686. 2°, printed title in red and black, engraved frontispiece, 9 (of 10) plates of subscribers' arms only, 31 plates on 30 sheets devoted to the arts and sciences and 45 plates, mostly of hunting and hawking, text woodcuts (lacking the initial leaf of approbation and final blank, frontispiece laid down with loss to blank margin, some plates lightly browned, plate 6 of arms and 4 hunting plates with closed tears, small hole in blank area of geometry plate, second plate in pt. II torn and repaired with minor loss to image and greater loss to lettering, other minor repairs, offsetting from plates, small wormtrack in lower gutter of some leaves). 19th-century blind-stamped calf (rubbed and scuffed but sound).
FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE GREAT 17TH-CENTURY SPORTING TITLES, published by Richard Blome who was described by Anthony Wood as "employing necessitous persons to write in several arts and to get contributions of noblemen to promote the work" (every plate in this work is dedicated to a member of the nobility or gentry). Schwerdt remarks that perfect copies are so rare and that he had seen only two out of about a dozen. A different work by Nicholas Cox had appeared under this same title in 1674. Harting 41; Westwood & Satchell p. 35; Schwerdt I, pp.72-73: "contains an enormous store of information"; Wing B3213.