Classics Of The American Shooting Field, Phillips 1930. This hunting book is titled "Classics Of The American Shooting Field, A Mixed Bag for the Kindly Sportsman 1783 - 1926", edited by John C. Phillips and Lewis Webb Hill, M.D., With A Frontispiece By Frank W. Benson And other illustrations. It was published in Boston and New York by Houghton Mifflin in 1930 and is a first edition. (The dates on the title page and copyright page match, and there are no other printings listed, so this is a first edition.) The book has gilt lettering on the spine and gilt-decorated green boards, with blank endpapers, a colored frontispiece by Frank W. Benson with the original tissue guard, the title page and an Acknowledgments page, a Source page, two pages of Contents, a long Introduction which is illustrated, 202 pages of text and numerous black-and-white illustrations by Frank Benson as well as other artists from the past, and a twelve page bibliography at the rear, for a total of 214 pages in the book. There are also two chapters on stories by Frank Forester - "The Warwick Woodlands and Tom Draw's Visit To Pine Brook" - both excerpts were included as full stories in the books titled "Frank Forester's Sporting Scenes And Characters" from the 1850's, and those books are in the auction here in a previous lot - and there is another chapter in Phillips' book here about Nash Buckingham's "De Shootin'est Gent'Man" coming up in another lot in this auction, so Phillips is covering his bases. Frank W. Benson (1862 - 1951) was an American artist from Salem, Massachusetts known for his realistic portraits, Impressionist paintings, watercolors and etchings, and he also produced numerous oil, wash and paintings of wildfowl and landscapes. The book is 8vo. and measures 9 1/4 x 6 3/8 in.wide, with a tight binding and clean pages and text - there are just two small spots we could find in the whole book; the spine and cover are slightly faded, with very light bumps on the spine and very tiny rubbing at the tips, and that's it. Overall the book is in very good condition and provides a good view of hunting in America from the 1700's into the 1920's. See also Bill McBride's A Pocket Guide to the Identification of First Editions, published in West Hartford, CT. #124 #1601