Men We Meet in the Field; or, The Bullshire Hounds

Bagot, A. G.Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.5
Word count
286K words
Chapters
29

Tags

English Originals Sports Country LifeHoundsSports and LeisurePortrait GalleryRural ChronicleAnimal PortrayalHumor ReliefFieldwork NotesHunting CultureBritish Milieu

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Men We Meet in the Field; or, The Bullshire Hounds by A. G. BagotAuthor: Bagot, A. G.,Language: English, Class: SK: Agriculture: Hunting sports, Release Date: Dec 7, 2016

Editor's review

This is an English essayistic work centered on fox hunting and the life of a hunt, in which Baggott, under the title "the people we meet in the field," brings hunters, country squires, grooms, and members of the hunt one by one onto the page. The Gutenberg entry classifies it under SK (Agriculture and Hunting Sports), which shows that its value lies not in plot but in its record of English rural hunting culture, character types, and local customs. The writing has a clear humorous and teasing tone, and the character sketches are vivid, reading like a set of rural character portraits. For today's readers, it is both material for understanding how modern English hunting operated and a window onto rural class relations and linguistic taste. It may be read as a customography, with attention to how the author sketches a character in a few strokes and how hunting served as a bond of rural sociability; at the same time, a sense of distance should be kept, since hunting ethics are much disputed today and the book is best treated as a historical text.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read by character chapters, and after each section note the character's traits in one or two sentences.
  2. Pay attention to the rural class relations behind the author's teasing tone and make brief annotations.
  3. Skip hunting-dog and hunting terminology at first, and look them up together after finishing the whole.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29

FAQ

Does the book teach hunting techniques? The focus is not on technical instruction but on "people"—the temperaments and manners of the various figures around the hunt. The author writes about people in an essayistic style, and hunting is more a background and social occasion than an operation manual.
Can I read it without knowing about fox hunting? Yes. The character sketches and humorous tone are readable in themselves, and hunting terminology does not form the main line of understanding. Readers unfamiliar with the background can read it as a collection of character sketches of English rural customs.
What stance does the book take on hunting? It was written in an era when hunting was regarded as part of rural life, and its stance is that of an insider, appreciative. Contemporary readers should read it as a historical customs text and retain their own ethical judgment.

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About the author

Bagot, A. G. Author

A. G. Bagot is an author about whom very little public information is available; neither nationality, dates of birth and death, nor educational background are confirmed, and only one work can be identified, Men We Meet in the Field or, The Bullshire Hounds. Judging from the words "field" and "hounds" in the title, the book is closely connected with fox-hunting in the English countryside and is likely a collection of sketches or observations portraying the various characters encountered in the hunting field, belonging to the tradition of British hunting literature. Such works typically emphasize character sketches and local atmosphere, with a humorous, gently teasing tone, and are aimed at readers interested in country life and equestrian and hound culture. Because sources are limited, the author's style and influence can only be inferred from the title of this single work, and more material would be needed to complete the picture.