The Life of a Sportsman

Writing under the pseudonym of 'Nimrod', this is Captain Apperley's famous "half-true, half-fictitious story descriptive of a country gentleman, of large fortune and highly connected, having two sons and two daughters the hero of my tale is the younger son, who, differing in tastes from his brother, enters into the sports of the field at a very early age, and becomes a thorough sportsman, in the legitimate sense of that, often wrongly applied, term." Apperley deals with the world before the railways, mentioning them in passing with foreboding for the future. He describes his sporting life and world with great thoroughness and affection. A compulsory read for comparison with R. S. Surtees, who looks back on the same world more cynically, a generation later. A great social document, a detailed account of field sports of various sorts and a good read.-Print ed.