Hobson William Colling (4 results)

Condition: Good. No edition stated (hardback). Folio (37cm by 25cm), title page, contents page, 42 double-page lithographic maps with contemporary outline colouring. Publisher's binding of half red morocco, red cloth boards, gilt tiling to the spine, gilt titling and design to the front board, marbled endpapers. The binding is scuffed and bumped (but intact); the maps are generally in excellent condition (one of them - the map of Essex - has a small mark to the verso). All editions of this atlas were undated; the binding of this copy matches other copies we have seen that can be dated to 1850 or thereabouts by provenance, and the railways are consistent with a publication date of about 1850. For example, the main railway south of York is named the "York and North Midland Railroad".

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. London, J. and C. Walker, [circa 1850s]. Folio, [ii] leaves (letterpress title and 'Reference to the Hunts', versos blank) and 42 double-page maps printed in four colours and extensively hand-coloured. The gilt-blocked centrepiece of the original binding is trimmed and mounted on a blank leaf at the end. Later period-style three-quarter vermilion morocco and cloth; covers very slightly marked and rubbed; leading and bottom edges slightly dampstained, occasionally visible in the margins, and in one instance encroaching slightly into the printed surface; one map split along the centrefold (but restored); some fingermarks and tanning about the edges; a few other minor signs of age and handling; a very good copy. The maps are lithographic reproductions of the county maps in John and Charles Walker's 'British Atlas' (Longman, Rees & Co., 1837), with the borders of the hunts delineated by a dashed line and hand-coloured, their names printed in blue, and places of meeting of foxhounds indicated. The atlas is undated, but the extent of the railway network appears to suggest a date in the early to mid-1850s.

42 double-page lithographed maps with added hand-colouring of boundaries and localities. Publisher's half roan, boards detached, 3 maps with some ink marginal annotation, one map rather dusty and marked in the margins, the title with a piece lost from the lower margin with loss of part of the imprint, now laid down, offered as a working copy.

Early, perhaps first, edition of this attractive atlas, the brainchild of the peripatetic map dealer William Colling Hobson, an obscure figure who struggled in the shadow of bankruptcy. It cleverly utilises lithographed versions of the Walkers' maps - originally published in Longman's British Atlas of 1837 - adding coloured stencils to identify the most notable hunts and black dots to mark their meeting places. None of the editions are dated, but Podeschi speculates that the earliest was issued in 1848. The ownership inscription in the present copy is dated 1852. Railways are featured, and this was the period of their rapid expansion, changing the face of the country and heralding the end of the age of coaching. It was also the age of the hugely popular sporting novelist Robert Smith Surtees, whose "sharp, authentic descriptions of the hunting field have retained their popularity among fox-hunters" (ODNB). Hobson appears to have led a precarious existence. In contemporary court reports, he is described as "late of the City of Dublin, but more late of Liverpool. Map-Seller, Horse Dealer, Dealer and Chapman". He published maps of Durham (1839) and Yorkshire (1843), but an ambitious map of Ireland on six sheets, dedicated to Queen Victoria, was assigned to Edward Holt after the copperplates were sold by auction at Sotheby's in 1837. From time-to-time, he was living in Liverpool, Manchester, and Newcastle, where in 1850 he is described as a "canvasser for maps". In 1851, as an an "insolvent debtor", he was up before the Lancashire county court. Provenance: Colonel James McDouall (1796-1872), of Logan, Wigtownshire, Inscribed on the front free endpaper verso: "Col: McDouall, 2nd. Life Gds., June, 1852". Educated at Christ's Hospital and Trinity College, Cambridge, McDouall entered the 2nd Life Guards in 1819 as a cornet, rising to become colonel from 1847 to 1854, when he retired. The McDouall Ranges, Northern Territory, Australia, are named in his honour. Podeschi/Mellon, Books on the Horse and Horsemanship, 181. The Jurist, Vol. 14, 1851. Quarto (359 x 237 mm). With 42 lithographic double-page maps hand-coloured in outline; letterpress title page and list of hunts. Original red half roan, spine gilt lettered direct in second and fifth compartments, gilt bands either side of raised bands, sides and corners edged with a gilt wavy roll, red morocco-grain cloth sides, title gilt to front cover within a foliate cartouche and with gilt vignettes of a running fox, riding crop and hunting horn, Nonpareil pattern marbled endpapers, sanguine speckled edges. Binding professionally refurbished, small stain to title page, scattered foxing and marginal finger soiling. A very good copy, presenting handsomely.