The Cover

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Bookplate courtesy of The National Sporting Library, Middleburg, Virginia.

The National Sporting Library, established in 1954 in Middleburg, Virginia, is devoted to turf and field sports. Driving through rolling green hills dotted with horses, one arrives at the library to find that the antique weathervane atop the cupola—one of eleven given to the library by the late Paul Mellon—is a horse. On the stone wall near the entrance to the grounds, looking so real it startles you, lurks a bronze fox created by local artist and horsewoman Eve Prime Fout. Inside the library are paintings, sculptures, and thirteen thousand volumes devoted to turf and field sports. Inside the books, the library's 9-by-7-cm bookplate features the face of a fox looking out from the center, framed by a horseshoe and backed by crossed gun, fishing pole, and riding crop.

The library began as a research collection for the staff members of The Chronicle of the Horse, an equestrian magazine published in Middleburg. The library's founders were the Chronicle's owner, George L. Ohrstrom Sr. (d. 1955), and its publisher, Alexander Mackay-Smith (1903-98), author of several sporting works whose columns grace the early issues of the National Sporting Library Newsletter. Today, the library is a nonprofit research center with unequaled resources on turf and field sports, encompassing foxhunting, steeplechase racing, flat racing, angling, and shooting.

The library has exceptional holdings of sporting journals, including the Cabinet of Natural History and American Rural Sports (1830-34), TheSporting Magazine (1792-1870), and the American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine (1829-44). In addition, the library has several outstanding special collections, such as the Ludwig von Hünersdorf Collection. Hünersdorf (1748-1812) was an eighteenth-century German riding master whose 205-title collection includes Pluvinel's L'Instruction du roy en l'exercice de monter á cheval (1629).

Another special collection, the John H. and Martha Daniels Collection of five thousand volumes on a wide variety of sporting pursuits, was donated in 1995 and includes a first edition of Izaac Walton's The Compleat Angler (1653) and nearly one hundred additional editions in multiple languages.

The library also contains the Harry T. Peters Jr. (d. 1981) Collection, which contains journal runs and 154 volumes on American sporting art and sport, a collection that Peters inherited from his father and developed further.

The National Sporting Library's Huth-Lonsdale-Arundel Collection was built over time, beginning with Frederick Henry Huth (1844-1918), a British book collector and bibliographer who compiled the classic reference book Works on Horses and Equitation: A Bibliographical Record of Hippology (1887). In 1918 Hugh Cecil Lowther, Fifth Earl of Lonsdale (1857-1944), a British book collector, Master of Foxhounds, and prizefighter, acquired Huth's collection. Upon the earl's death, the three-hundred-book collection was purchased by a foundation established by the American collector Russell Arundel (1902-78), another Master of Foxhounds. Finally, in 1975 the Arundel Foundation and family donated the collection to the National Sporting Library.

The National Sporting Library, which receives financial support from a nationwide membership, is open to the public, provides reference service, publishes a newsletter, and supports a lecture series, an annual book sale, sporting art and rare book exhibits, and a Web site. Recent library exhibits include Sojourn at Home: Sporting Paintings from the Paul Mellon Bequest to the Yale Center for British Art, Art between Hard Covers, and Inspired Animation: The Art of Wesley Dennis. The children of Dennis (1903-66), noted illustrator of children's books, particularly those of Marguerite Henry (1902-97), including Misty of Chincoteague and King of the Wind, saved Dennis's sketches and paintings after his death and made them available for the exhibit at the National Sporting Library. The library's Web site includes a catalog of the library's collection. Specialized manuscript and archival files, such as Sheet Music of Foxhunting Songs, are being scanned onto the Web site.

Through its collections...