Aspects of Golf.
Worcestershire: Grant & Wilson, 2015. 108p. cloth slipcase ltd ed 182/250 copies. Hutchinson's, rarest book, reprinted with additions and now sold out.
At the age of sixteen in 1875 Horace Hutchinson was elected captain of the Royal North Devon Golf Club at Westward Ho! He won the Amateur Championship in 1886 at St Andrews and this was repeated at Hoylake in 1887. In 1886 he published his first book, Hints on Golf. These events shaped Horace Hutchinson's life in golf and writing. He would become captain or president of thirteen golf clubs, including The Royal and Ancient Golf Club, and author of more than 70 books on golf and non-golf topics. Hutchinson's titles varied from Golf Greens and Green keeping to Cricketing Saws and Stories, Dreams and Their Meanings, travel and mystery fiction. His enthusiasm for golf and the printed word made Hutchinson a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines as well as editor of sporting books including The Badminton Library series.
This reproduction in full is accompanied by a well-researched biography of Horace Hutchinson by Richard A. Durran and also a bibliography of Hutchinson's authorship and editorship of golf books. In addition, Michael D. Mark has researched an extensive bibliography of Hutchinson's books exclusive of golfing themes. The Bibliographies of Hutchinson's writings include: Golf Books written by Hutchinson, Selected Golf Book Contributions, and Books without Golfing Themes. The latter shows the Author's extraordinary diversity of subject. The fifty-three titles include several on other rural sports, fictional mysteries, sailing from Dover to Canada, profiles of important people of the era and even dreams and their meanings. The Introduction is by D M Wilson, III.
Aspects of Golf, published in 1900 at Bristol by J.W. Arrowsmith and priced at one shilling, is a collection of eight essays by Hutchinson that presents a light-hearted, but casually insightful, look at the game of golf with an occasional venture into its prospects. Chapters are:
Golf under the New Code
Golf of the Rising Generation
How to Practice: Methods of Play
An Appreciation of Colonel Bogey Women at Golf
Social Aspects of Golf
Some American Views of Golf
"If Allan Robertson came to Sandwich"
There is gentle humour in Hutchinson's writing: "The caddies, it is to be feared, now and again hear some rather evil language in the mouths of those whom they have been taught to consider their betters." And, an American was asked how he enjoyed St Andrews: "Well," he said, there's two things that I'm very much surprised at over here I've been disappointed not to see any palisades, and I've been terribly disappointed with the stationmaster's garden."
Aspects of Golf is a very scarce resource in the library of golf, as even the most robust private collections do not have copies and auction history is virtually non-existent.
The book is published in a limited edition of 250 copies and bound in scarlet arbelave buckram and complete with an arbelave buckram slipcase. The 120 pages are printed on acid-free silk-coated paper. It is produced by full colour process and includes 29 illustrations. Item #8667
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