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Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,000
Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919) Big Game Hunting in the Rockies and on the Great Plains, signed limited edition.
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1899.
Limited edition, quarto; copy number 457 of 1,000 large-paper copies; title printed in red and black; illustrated with signed photographic frontispiece portrait of Roosevelt and 55 plates by Remington, Frost, Beard and others each with captioned tissue guard; bound in gilt-stamped full tan buckram, gilt-lettered black and brown morocco title labels, rear board stamped with a black bear head, top edge gilt, others uncut (minor, scattered creasing; lower hinge cracked, minor discoloration to spine, some wear and small losses to brown morocco labels); 11 x 8 in.
On February 14th, 1884, 25-year-old Theodore Roosevelt tragically lost both his wife and mother. An avid diarist, his entry for that day simply includes a large "X" and the sentence, "The light has gone out of my life." Their deaths hit the young man incredibly hard, and he forbade anyone from mentioning his wife Alice in his presence for the rest of his life. He did not even write about her in his autobiography.
In the wake of tragedy, Roosevelt sought solace in the embrace of the American wilderness. He became a rancher and an avid hunter, documenting his experiences in writing. Big Game Hunting is comprised of two earlier works, "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman" (1885) and "The Wilderness Hunter" (1893). "My object in writing these books was not only to give a full account of the chase of every kind of big game proper to the United States, but also where possible to touch on their life histories. I write for my fellow ranchmen and fellow hunters, and for the young men of America, in whose veins the red blood of life runs lustily, and who joy in the strenuous pleasure that comes only as the prize of toil and exposure in the open."
