UPTON, Roger D. Newmarket & Arabia. An Examination of the Descent of Racers and Coursers. SPORT

FIRST EDITION. 8vo. (20 x 13.5 cm). pp.xi+211+32 [ads]. Publisher's original rust red cloth, upper cover with gilt lettering and stamped with a horse's head in profile, spine lettered in gilt, blue-coated endpapers. With a hand-coloured wood-engraved frontispiece and 4 large folding lithographed pedigree tables. Ex libris Henry Vivian Musgrave-Clark, breeder of Arabian horses and founder of the Arab Horse Society, with his bookplate to flyleaf; additional bookplate of Welbeck Abbey to front pastedown. Some damp related discolouration to cloth, light shelfwear evident to corners, generally a very good copy. First edition of Upton's account of the bloodlines of British thoroughbreds. He was an early expert on the subject and enlisted the help of "an Arabian gentleman of a Nejdean family" (Preface), who confirmed this book's accuracy. Upton intended the work to "point out errors that have been committed in the breeding of our horse" (ibid). A captain in the 9th Lancers, Roger Dawson Upton (d. 1881), travelled to Arabia shortly after publishing this work in order to obtain pure-bred horses to improve the quality of British cavalry remounts. He also wrote Gleanings from the Deserts of Arabia (1881).