The Horse and His Rider, Or, Sketches and Anecdotes of the Noble Quadruped: And of Equestrian Nations

by Rollo Springfield

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

242 pages, Paperback

Published January 28, 2013

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata]

Apr 2 ~~ Another to review tomorrow.

Apr 5 ~~ 'Tomorrow' is finally today! Too much going on around here lately! lol

I saw this book the day it showed up at Project Gutenberg and couldn't resist setting it up to read right away.

Published in 1847, the edition I read had a page with this inscription on it, in a big scrawl: Lord Coventry's book which his dear Uncle Henry gave him.

Thank you dear Uncle Henry, this was an entertaining addition to the library! The author writes about the impact the horse has made on Man; he tells stories about the connections between horses and other domesticated animals, and he gives information about various countries with strong histories of life with the horse. We spend a lot of time in the steppes with the Cossacks and others who know how to ride before they can even walk.

These pieces were mostly fascinating, but they did come with the typical attitude of the day toward anyone who was not white and 'civilized'. You would think one horseman would simply recognize the horsemanship of another, not make comments about their appearance.

Something that tickled me about this book was in a chapter about the speed and endurance of the horse, where the author makes this statement: "The racing gallop is evidently but a succession of leaps, in which the forelegs and the hind-legs start in pairs, each pair acting simultaneously."

Of course we know now that this concept is incorrect, but it was 30 years after this book was written that the horse's gallop was demonstrated in Muybridge's motion pictures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadwear..., thus making a liar out of our author. But Springfield couldn't help it. He wrote what he knew, and mostly he knew a lot of nifty stuff about the horse.

[Debbie Zapata]

This 1847 book was fairly interesting, allowing for outdated information at times and a tendency to belittle many of the people the author talked about in his chapters on various 'Equestrian nations'.

The earlier chapters were better, since they dealt more with horses or ponies themselves and left out a great deal of the drivel against people.

Some of the incidents were new to me, others I vaguely remembered reading in the dim past. There are a few paragraphs about the great horse Eclipse, others about favorite horses of Indian rulers, and a long section about gauchos and the horses of South America.

But by the time those subjects appeared, I was skimming because of the snooty attitude of the author towards nearly everyone who lived in a country other than merry old England.

And here is an explanation for why parts of this book seemed familiar. Turns out I had read and reviewed a different edition back in 2019. That is not all that long ago, so I suppose I should be worried about not remembering it! But I am happy to say that I gave it a more appropriate star rating this time, and also mentioned the rude attitude in my other review.

I think I will double check the remainder of the titles on my Horse Book Fit list just to be sure I don't read different editions of the same book again. lol

[Young Soo Jeon]

Worth reading, especially for general knowledge of horses, such as saddles....