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Friday, January 11, 2013 , Posted by ManilasMan at 9:52 AM

In 1809, the great caricaturist, Thomas Rowlandson, engraved plates after designs by two other celebrated caricaturists, Henry Bunbury andGeorge Moutard Woodward, for Annals of Sporting, a satire of contemporary sporting anecdotes by "Caleb Quizem Esq." Sporting anecdotes as a literary genre would not recover until refreshed by Pierce Egan, his fundamental contributions to sports journalism collected asSporting Anecdotes in 1823.

In 1808, the year before Annals of Sporting was published, Rowlandson engraved the plates after Bunbury designs for the first collected edition of The Annals of Horsemanship and The Academy For Grown Horsemen, both satires by "Geoffrey Gambado" originally appearing in the late 18th century. The author of its text,  the pseudonymous Gambado, has been tentatively identified as the antiquary and lexicographer Francis Grose, best known for hisClassical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785). (Space)


The author behind the pseudonym "Caleb Quizem Esq." remains unknown. Considering that Rowlandson and Bunbury had earlier collaborated on the two Gambado volumes satirizing horsemanship and that Francis Grose was, apparently, responsible for the volumes' text*, it would seem reasonable to presume that Grose wrote the text to Rowlandson and Bunbury's Annals Of Sporting. The portrait engraving of Quizem, with its references to Gambado and Annals of Horsemanship, certainly suggests it.

However, after checking Grose's pulse I learned that not only is he indeed defunct but that he died in 1791, eighteen years before Annals Of Sporting. He thus seems an unlikely candidate for its authorship. Unless, of course, he shows up as one of the ringleaders of the looming zombie invasion and stakes his claim as Quizem, inquisitor of correspondents amongst the sporting set. (Space)


[ROWLANDSON, Thomas, engraver. BUNBURY, Henry and George Moutard Woodward, artists]. QUISEM, Caleb (pseudonym). The Annals of Sporting. By Caleb Quizem Esq. and his Various Correspondents. London: Thomas Tegg, 1809.

First edition. Twelvemo (6 3/4 x 4 in; 171 x 105 mm). [10], 104 pp., untrimmed. Hand-colored fold-out frontispiece engraved by Thomas Rowlandson after Henry Bunbury, hand-colored vignette title of a rider falling from Pegasus, and twenty-six hand-colored etched plates by Thomas Rowlandson after Henry Bunbury, George Moutard Woodward, and possibly others.

Publisher's original printed boards. Publisher's advertisements printed on rear board within ornamental border.

Not found in Abbey, Tooley, nor, surprisingly, Siltzer.

Schwerdt II, pp. 119-120. Chute 533. Grego, Rowlandson the Caricaturist, p. 178.  Falk, p. 216. Grolier, Rowlandson 63.
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*“Gambado is said to have been Francis Grose, compiler of  A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” (Riely, John C.  Horace Walpole and ‘the Second Hogarth’, in Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, Autumn, 1975).
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, currently offering this title, with our thanks.
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Of related Interest:

When Horses and Human Keisters Collide.

The Story Of Nobody, By Somebody, Illustrated By Someone.
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