Doughty, Thomas | First edition of "the first colored-plate sporting book printed in America"

Doughty, John, & Thomas Doughty

The Cabinet of Natural History and Rural Sports. Philadelphia: J. & T. Doughty, 1830–1833

3 vols. in 2, 4to (276 x 233 mm). Engraved frontispiece of Charles Willson Peale by J. B. Longacre after Rembrandt Peale, engraved frontispiece of William Bartram in vol. 2, engraved pictorial title-pages, 54 handcolored lithographed plates, two uncolored engraved plates (pl. 5 in vol. 2 and pl. 7 in vol. 3), all plates in vol. 1 after Thomas Doughty and by various artists in vols. 2 and 3, numerous wood-engraved text illustrations; some browning, foxing, and soiling throughout, a very few text leaves and fewer plates with short marginal tears or repaired tears, a couple of plates with tin ships to fore-edge corners. Contemporary polished calf, covers elaborately panelled in gilt and blind with largely identical roll-tools (first vol. with ticket of "F. Belcher, Fancy Binder, Troy"; second vol with ticket of Belcher & Burton, Binders, 225 River-st, Troy"), spines elaborately gilt in compartments, vol. 1 with green-coated endpapers, vol. 2 with yellow-coated endpapers, plain edges; rather rubbed, rebacked, preserving much or original spines, inner hinges reinforced with cloth tape.

First edition of "the first colored-plate sporting book printed in America" (Henderson). It was also essentially the first book issued in America with handcolored lithographed plates, heralding in an era of printmaking dominated by that process. Published in monthly parts, the Cabinet contains a farrago of information on contemporary sport and natural history. Publication of the rare third volume, which has here been bound in with the second, was suspended after the fourth number—perhaps because subscribers did not respond well to the artists who replaced the Hudson River School artist Thomas Doughty, who had left the Cabinet to pursue his career as a landscape painter.

REFERENCE:

Bennett 35; Gee 132; Henderson, Early American Sport 40; Howes D433; Phillips 69; Reese, American Color Plate Books 12

PROVENANCE:

George R. Beach Jr. (emblematic bookplate)