ROOSEVELT'S BOOK HUNTING TRIPS OF A RANCHMAN 1885 "THE MEDORA EDITION" #366 OF 500 BY PUTNAM'S.
Item Description
8.75 X 11.5" X 2" thick with 318 numbered pages. This book, with restored hardcover and missing 2 of 7 full page prints of animal heads shot by TR, is ink inscribed on the first blank page "Clarence Fahnestock/Christmas 1886/from Wm Baker". Dr. Fahnestock, age 13 in 1886, became a prominent NYC physician and outdoors man. Serving as a Major with the 308th Infantry in France, he died in 1918 and his brother later donated about 2,400 acres of land in Putnam and Dutchess counties NY which became the Clarence Fahnestock Memorial State Park. This is an early and rare Theodore Roosevelt hunting book, hand inscribed in June 1885 by the publisher with number "366" (of 500). See expanded description online.
The original fabric cover has been rebacked. There are small pieces of the original fabric missing at the top and bottom of the spine plus a vertical channel of missing original fabric ¼-3/8" wide between the spine and front cover and a narrower channel missing between the spine and the back cover. There are also thin losses from the four corner tips of the covers. However, the book displays well and has a nice sturdy binding. Inside the covers are new cream-colored end papers. Inside the front cover, the end paper has a three-line black rubber stamp naming "Kennedy Galleries, Inc./ Founded By H. Wunderlich 1874 / The Library". This same stamp appears at the very bottom of the title page with a black marker line covering the second line of the rubber stamp. On the first sheet, blank except for the inscription naming Fahnestock, in the gutter a narrow line of paper about 3" long adhered to the replaced end paper and pull away from the edge of the sheet; however, the sheet remains attached to the binding at both the top and bottom.
On the Frontispiece with image of TR in fringed buckskin jacket and pants wearing large knife at his waist and holding his Winchester rifle, a small piece is off the bottom right corner tip ( only about ¼ x 3/8 x ¾") and there is a 8" vertical tear where the sheet joins the spine with a .25" wide by 2.5" long loose piece, but still present, at the very bottom of the page. The page is still bound in and held by the upper 3" which is not split.
Page xiii lists with animal names and dates in 1883 and 1884 seven animals that were shot by TR with their heads illustrated under the title "Drawings By J. C. Beard". Two prints with heads of the Bull Elk (page 272) and the Grizzly Bear (page 299) were neatly removed from the book but these five remain: White Tail Buck, Black Tail Buck, Prong-Horn Buck, Big-Horn Ram and Buffalo Bull.
On page xi is a list of four "Etchings By R. Swain Gifford and on pages xv-xvi is a list of 20 "Full Page Illustrations" naming artists A. B. Frost, R. Swain Gifford, J.C. Beard, Fannie E. Gifford, and Henry Sandham.
Page vii-ix lists the "Contents" which are divided into ten chapters with titles such as: Ranching In The Bad Lands; Water-Fowl, The Deer Of The River Bottoms, A trip On The Prairie; A Trip After Mountain Sheep; The Lordly Buffalo, etc.
TR dedicated the book "to that keenest of Sportsmen and truest of Friends, my brother Elliot Roosevelt". Edmund Morris, TR biographer, states in The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt: "The first edition, limited to five hundred copies, set new standards of lavishness in Americana. It was printed on quarto-size sheets of thick creamy, hand woven paper, with two-and a-half-inch margins and sumptuous engravings. Bound in gray (actually more a brown tone), gold-lettered canvas, it retailed at the then unheard-of price of $15, and quickly became a collector's item.... And was soon accepted as a standard textbook of big-game hunting in the United States. While not perfect, still a very desirable, very attractive first edition.
