An Abridgment of “The Jockey Club, or a Sketch of the Manners of the Age.” In Three Parts.

Rare American abridgment in early homemade dust jacket, Boston 1795

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First abridged edition in America, “copied from the eleventh [London] edition.” The Jockey Club lampooned the excesses, intrigues, and manners of late Georgian society through the world of horse racing. This Boston abridgment condenses the original’s satire for an American readership, retaining its witty tone and social observations while omitting or adapting some specifically British references.

This copy is notable for its homemade dust jacket, lettered in ink along its spine, and fashioned from plain, coarse wove paper. Salvaged from late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century waste or wrapping, the jacket was likely fashioned made in the 1800s or 1810s.

The binding repair is improvised: thick, visible sewing secures the cracked and fragile spine, with a stab hole piercing the original printed spine label—a necessary compromise, in the view of an anonymous early nineteenth-century restorer. Stenciled ownership marks, “T.B. S.” and “T. B. Sampson,” appear on the title-page, possibly identifying the restorer, though the exact identity remains unknown.

Price: $350.00