GLIG-GAMENA ANGEL-DEOD, OR, THE SPORTS AND PASTIMES OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND: Including the Rural and Domestic Recreations, May-Games, Mummeries, Pageants, Processions, and Pompous Spectacles from the Earliest Period to the Present Time.
London: T. Bensley for J. White, 1801. First edition. Illustrated with frontis and 39 hand-colored engraved plates by Strutt. Bound by Morrell for John Wanamaker. Quarto full red morocco with sides elaborately tooled in blind and ruled in gilt; 5 spine panels within raised bands tooled in blind and stamped in gilt; all edges gilt; elaborately gilt-tooled inner dentelles; beautifully marbled endpapers. Bound by Morrell for John Wanamaker. Bookplate of son Rodman Wanamaker on pastedown. Father and son were luxury department store magnates and the elder Wanamaker, for whom Philadelphia’s Wanamaker Building is named, served as Postmaster General. Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes" contains "all forms of mental and physical recreation, from archery to bell-ringing, football to apple-bobbing, opera to dancing round the maypole," his primary interest being "less in the rules of games than in the lives of their players" -- it is "not for nothing [he has] been called the first English social historian" (David Parlett, website of the University of Suffolk). Nearly fine with tiny split at front hinge, few small areas of rubbing, and just a scattering of light foxing.
Item #56139
Price: $1,750.00