THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S BIG GAME HUNTING IN THE ROCKIES, SIGNED LIMITED EDITION, LARGE-PAPER COPY, BEAUTIFULLY BOUND

ROOSEVELT, Theodore. Big Game Hunting in the Rockies and On the Great Plains. Comprising "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman" and "The Wilderness Hunter" New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons; The Knickerbocker Press, 1899. Thick quarto, modern full red morocco, elaborately gilt decorated spine and boards, leather onlay deer centrepiece, marbled endpapers with morocco leather joint and gilt dentelles, original leather cover label laid down on flyleaf, uncut. $11,500.

Signed limited first edition, number 450 of 1000 large-paper copies signed by Roosevelt beneath the frontispiece portrait. With 55 illustrations by Remington, Frost, Beard, Sanford and others, including four etchings by R. Swain Gifford and numerous wood-engraved text illustrations, handsomely bound.

Roosevelt noted, "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." "Midway through Roosevelt's third term [in the New York State Assembly] in 1884, his wife died after giving birth to a daughter. He immersed himself in legislative matters to the end of the session, then sought solace on his ranch in western Dakota—'a land of vast silent spaces, a place of grim beauty'… For a while the 25-year-old widower considered a life of ranching, hunting, and writing" (ANB). Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, published in 1885, was written during this Dakota sojourn. The Wilderness Hunter was first published in 1893. Wheelock, 7.

Interior generally clean, binding fine and handsome.