Background:

These engraved British Sports prints, many hand-colored, are from the Annals of Sporting, a monthly gazette published in England in the early 1800s.

Each issue featured articles of interest to the sportsman including a guide to sports appropriate to the season, calendar of activities, training advice, sporting poetry and fictional stories, letters to the editor, winners of reader essay contests ("...which obtained the highest reward of Ten Pounds"), members of sporting societies, biographical sketches of English sportsman and sporting activities in other parts of the British Empire ("Method of Catching Quail, Partridges, etc. in India").  Also included were more technical articles such as one on the anatomy of the Horse (see print below).

While the Annals covered many sporting activities, the prints featured here include Hunting, Shooting, Coursing, Racing and Winter Sports.  The majority of the engraved prints are based on illustrations by Samuel Alken (eldest son of the successful British sports artist Henry Alken) and Edwin Landseer (brother of the artist Thomas Landseer)