Golf Goes to the Movies

 

When a feature length film is made based upon a novel, the resulting escalation in the price of a first edition of the book can be breathtaking. What often was just an ordinary first edition, immediately becomes a valued possession worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Two non-golf examples of this phenomenon are Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It and Waller’s The Bridges of Madison County. Is there a similar effect in the world of golf books? 

Caddyshack is the top grossing golf movie of all time, bringing in $84 million in gross receipts at the box office. Tin Cup ranks second with $69 million in gross receipts and Happy Gilmore ranks third with $50 million. None of these popular movies, however, were based on a book.

The Legend of Bagger Vance was Steve Pressfield’s first novel, published in 1995. The book was made into a movie in 2000, directed by Robert Redford. The movie featured an all star cast of Will Smith, Matt Damon, Jack Lemmon and the lovely Charlize Theron. It offers a nice depiction of an exhibition match between Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen. The book was a bigger success than the movie, which cost over $60 million to shoot and only grossed $32 million at the box office. While a large supply of reprint editions are readily available, the original first edition, first printing or an advanced reading copy usually sells for a couple of hundred dollars.  

 

Dead Solid Perfect, a 1998 movie based on the Dan Jenkins book of the same title, stars Randy Quaid. While we can recommend the 1974 book as a nice read, as one of the most popular golf books of all time, it was printed in very large quantities and is not particularly collectable.    

The Greatest Game Every Played

 This 2005 movie was based on the 2002 book by Mark Frost of the same name. It tells the story of Francis Ouimet’s historic 1913 U.S. Open win. While the book is not collectable, it is a great story.

Goldfinger by Ian Fleming

The closest a golf book collector can come to a blockbuster movie book is one that is not entirely about golf, but has a world-famous golfing scene – Goldfinger. 

Goldfinger was first published in 1959 by Jonathan Cape, London. The cover is black cloth with gilt lettering. The dust jacket contains an image of a skull with a red rose it its teeth and is illustrated below. First editions can be identified if the verso of the title page states “First Published 1959.” There were 24,000 copies of the first edition printed.[i]

 

 

 

 

Since many reprints were printed with a facsimile dust jacket, you have to verify that a later jacket was not put on a first edition. Given the value of the books, there is a big incentive to do this, so be cautious. A true first edition dust jacket has a price of 15s (15 shillings).[ii]

Goldfinger was reprinted many, many times by several different publishers in both hard and softcover editions. The first American edition was published by MacMillan in 1959. The dust jacket price is $3. This edition is identical to the U.K. first edition with the exception of the Macmillan logo replacing the Cape logo on the spine. Cape printed the U.S. edition for MacMillan and they produced 7,500 copies.[iii]

First editions of Goldfinger with the dust jacket come up for auction several times each year, including at the big auction houses and generally sell for between $1,000 and $1,200 of late. Copies signed by Fleming sell at many multiples of these numbers. Generally, the first American edition sells for between $600 and $800 with the jacket.

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[i] goldeneyebooks.com

[ii] Proof copies of the U.K. edition are bound in a green-yellow wrapper with the Cape logo printed in white. From Ian Fleming’s James Bond by Otto Penzler, 1999.

[iii] Ibid. Penzler.

Fifty Years of American Golf by H.B. Martin

Fifty Years of American Golf was published by Dodd, Mead in 1936 and written by H.B. Martin. The book was published in both a limited edition of 355 copies and a standard trade edition, in 1936. The limited edition version of the books was hand numbered and issued with a red slipcase, and each was signed by Martin. Not many of the slipcases can be found, so a copy with the original slipcase is considered rare.

Although Herbert Warren Wind would eclipse H.B. Martin in 1948 with his definitive History of American Golf, Martin’s work is still one of the most important in American golf history. 

 

 

Harry Bromlaw “Dickey” Martin

 

H.B.’s full name was Harry Brownlaw Martin and he was a golf writer. Martin was an early ghost writer for Walter Hagen. In much the same way that O.B. Keeler was a sidekick of Bobby Jones, so H.B. Martin was for Walter Hagen. Period newspaper articles mention that Hagen and Martin would sail together on transatlantic ocean crossings. In addition to writing a golf column for The New York Globe at various times during his career Martin also wrote for The World and The American. His obituary in The New York Times in 1959 called him a leading authority on golf and said that at one time he was the publisher and editor of four golf magazines. He was also a founder of the P.G.A. in 1917. Records indicate he played to a handicap of twelve. 

 

We went back and researched when Fifty Years of American Golf was originally published. The New York Times book review in 1936 gave it a positive review and noted that Martin writes with “real zest and a pleasant humor”. The original cost of the 423 page book was $5.

The book is organized into thirty chapters including “Golf Architects and Famous Courses” and a strong chapter on “The Hectic Twenties”. Partially, what makes this book so good is that Martin lived through the height of the golden age of golf course architecture and amateur golf. He knew many of the greatest architects and golfers as contemporaries and thus has unique insights into the game’s history.

His well researched history gives plenty of in-depth detail. Pages 135-136 list all the golf clubs formed in the United States prior to 1895, a list we have always looked for, but couldn’t find. It lists over fifty clubs, many of which we found to be surprising. Those formed in the first five years are:

 

1888

St. Andrews, New York 

1889

Tuxedo Club, New York

 1890

Middlesboro Golf Club, Kentucky

Newport Golf Club, Rhode Island

Hotel Champlain Course, New York

1891

Shinnecock Hills, New York

Philadelphia Country Club, Bala, Pennsylvania

1892           

Chicago Golf Club, Illinois

The Warren’s Farm Golf Club, Massachusetts

Baltimore Golf Club, Maryland

Powelton Golf Club, Newburgh, New York 

As good as the writing is in the book, the black and white pictures from golf at the turn of the century through 1936 are each worth at least a thousand words. There are 168 pictures in the book, and each one is interesting. Most golf history books reprint the same pictures repeatedly. Martin’s book is quite interesting in that the early photographs are seldom seen in other books, even to this day. They tell a story of a formal gentleman’s game.

 

A reprint edition of Fifty Years of American Golf was printed in 1966 by Argosy-Antiquarian and was also issued with a slipcase. This edition of the book is more widely available than the 1936 original.

Other Books by Martin

Martin was also the author of Golf for Beginners in 1930, Golf Made Easy in 1932, Golf Yarns: the best things about the game of golf in 1913 and ten other titles, mostly focused on instruction. He was also the author of the important club history The Garden City Golf Club 1899-1949.

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Additional Golf Flicker Books

Our original write-up of golf flicker books in April of 2006 was so successful that we are returning to the subject again this month. Flicker books are the Rodney Dangerfield of golf book collecting – they don’t get any respect. Joe Murdoch’s original bibliography of golf books didn’t cover flicker books and the Donovan and Murdoch bibliography only had sketchy coverage of flickers. Luckily for the collector and fan of flicker books, the Donovan and Jerris bibliography treat them as golf books and provide coverage.

We like flicker books and feature additional ones here that we missed in our first go-around. They all tend to be quite rare since, if they were used frequently, they usually became soiled, rip or fall apart. And since they are small and fragile, they have not been cared for over the years to the same degree that full-sized books have. 

Ben Hogan Flicker Book 

This tiny book is only 1¾ by 2½ inches and is illustrated throughout with stop-action photographs of Hogan and his classic “smashing” drive (from start to finish). The book flips in both directions, creating the appearance of a motion picture.  The book was a promotion and printed in the 1940s by “Bromo-Seltzer”, the maker of the antacid used for heartburn and hangovers. The ”Magic Eye” movie includes narration at the bottom of each page and discusses weight shift, posture, hand position, etc. Apparently the “little man with the big golf game” as they call Hogan, preferred Bromo-Seltzer to settle his nerves!

Willie Anderson – A Perfect Drive 

The very rare A Perfect Drive flicker book was produced circa 1910 by the C.C. Chattell Company, an early club maker, as a promotional item to help sell clubs. This 1¾ by 2¾ inch book has thirty pages of Willie Anderson performing the perfect drive, on the recto side of each page only.  Anderson was the first to win four U.S. Open championships and still the only golfer to win three in a row, in 1903-1905. We have only seen this item come up for auction once and it is not listed in the golf reference books, making it very rare.

Pictorial Golf – Chick Fraser These four flicker books, produced as a set in 1922, are titled Pictorial Golf: Chick Fraser Playing Driver, Midiron, Mashie Pitch, Putter: A moving picture of the fundamental golf shots. Each is illustrated throughout with motion-picture photographs taken by W.G. Reis, showing Chick Fraser demonstrating a complete swing for each of the clubs noted. Each flicker book is 3¼ by 1¾ inches, and they were issued with a two-part black and gold box. Not exactly a household name, Chick Fraser was the professional during the 1920s at the now defunct Midwick Country Club in Los Angeles. 

Sam Snead – Stop-Action Golf 

These two Stop-Action flicker books featuring Sam Snead were produced in a series by Coca Cola. Both are 46 pages in length and were produced in the early 1960s. Book one features Snead hitting the driver and book two features Snead hitting the four iron.

 

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Sam Martz Golf Book Collection

A retired Canadian business man has given his 4,730 collection of golf books to The University of British Columbia, putting one of the world’s great collections into the public domain. The collection was appraised at $450,000. The 81 year old former Meat-packing magnet Sam Martz gave the collection to UBC because he wanted it preserved in perpetuity.

Click here for details on the gift. Martz believes the collection of books is the third largest in existance behind those at The U.S.G.A. and Alaistair Johnston’s private collection. We actually think it’s the fourth largest, counting the Probst Library (b elow)

The University of Chicago houses the golf book collection of Arthur W. Schultz which is made up of 1,600 books.

Other prolific golf collectors have included Joseph Murdoch, who auctioned off his large golf book collection in 1998. One of the early collectors of the twentieth century was C.B. Clapcott, an englishman and employee of the post office. He died in the late 1950s, but defore he did, he sold a major part of this library to another great collector - Colonel R. Otto Probst, of South Bend, Indiana. Probst bought the collection in 1956 for 350 pounds. Much of Probst’s 6,000 book collection is on display at the PGA Historical Center in Florida.

Other major collectors include O.M. Leland, who was Dean of the Engineering School at the University of Minnesota in the early part of the 20th century. He donated his collection to the U.S.G.A. Library.

Among famous golfers, Ben Crenshaw is a noted collector. His website notes that his collection contains over 800 golf books.

 

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Golf Books by J.H. Taylor

J.H. Taylor is one of golf’s forgotten champions. Taylor won the Open Championship five times (1894, 1895, 1900, 1909 & 1913). He also captained the British Ryder Cup team in 1933. He was the first player to play all four rounds of a major championship under 80 – a feat he accomplished at St. Andrews. Taylor is the third and least well-known member of the triumvirate of Taylor, Vardon and Braid.

J.H. Taylor was born in poverty in North Devon, England. His father died young, so Taylor starting working at age eleven. He was at one time greenkeeper at Royal North Devon – Westward Ho! He educated himself, making the completion of two golf books unassisted quite a feat. Among his other accomplishments, he founded the British P.G.A. in 1903. This was at a time when amateurs were respected and professional golfers were not. Taylor died at age 91 in 1963.

Taylor on Golf 

Taylor on Golf: Impressions, Comments and Hints was published in 1902 by Hutchinson, London. The American edition was published by Appleton in 1903. The book was published with several different binding styles, depending upon the edition.

The first British edition has the title in gilt with a design on the front :

The first American has six golf clubs on the front: 

    

Later editions have a golf bag and clubs on the cover:                                                       

  

Taylor on Golf was published in a second edition, also published in 1902; a third in 1903; a fourth in 1905 and a fifth in 1911. The fifth edition includes revised content and the book was expanded from 328 pages to 348 pages.

Since both the first and second editions were printed in 1902 you need to be able to distinguish between the two editions. The first edition, first printing should have a #1 on the last page of the text. Also, the second edition plainly states “Second Edition” on the title page.

The book is an eclectic mix of topics. Taylor devotes a chapter to “Courses Where Championship Might be Played” and makes the case for Westward Ho!, Brancaster and North Berwick. His chapter on “Golf in America” only mentions Garden City by name and states “The climate of America is not so favourable to the playing of the game as the climate experienced in the United Kingdom”.  A very interesting historical book with period black and white photos of various courses.

 Golf: My Life’s Work 

Golf My Life’s Work is Taylor’s autobiography and was published by Jonathan Cape in London. Both the first and second editions were published in 1943. This book was published in red cloth and was issued with a dust jacket. Some of the dust jackets were printed on the reverse of existing dust jackets. The jacket is a basic brown paper with green lettering.                             

Since the book was produced during the war, you will note that across from the title page the book is stamped “Book Production War Economy Standard”. Taylor was also the author of the Southampton Public Golf Courses handbook, published in England in 1935, it is a softcover 40 page booklet.

Not by J.H. Taylor. 

Two books not written by J. H. Taylor are The Art of Golf, 1912 and The Lure of the Links, 1920. These books were written by Joshua Taylor, who was J.H.’s brother. Joshua was also a good golfer, although not as learned as his brother. The Art of Golf is an instructional book. The Lure of the Links covers a variety of unusual topics such as “Golf in Strange Places” and “Men one meets in the clubhouse” and “The perfect caddie”.

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The Bogey Man by George Plimpton

Originally published September 2007 

 

 

This summer we have been looking at writers who only wrote one or two books about golf, but are worthy of a high place in the literature of the game. One such writer is George Plimpton. It would be difficult to have a better pedigree than Plimpton, who was educated at St. Bernard’s School, an elite private school on Manhattan’s East Side, then at Phillips Exeter Academy and then at Harvard. He was the editor of the Harvard Lampoon and also attended Kings College Cambridge. He edited the serious Paris Review for fifty years.

 

The Bogey Man was part of a series Plimpton wrote as he attempted various professional sports including football, tennis, golf and boxing. Travel & Leisure Golf ranked The Bogey Man as the eleventh best golf book in history in a 2004 compilation of the twenty-five best golf books ever. The book is not particularly collectable, but we like to focus on a good balance between rare and unusual golf books and those that we can enjoy reading. The Bogey Man sits squarely in the later category.

 

  

Plimpton was six foot four inches tall and had a well-heeled accent. He held true to his pedigree and sense of place in the class hierarchy throughout life. He played his golf at the ultra exclusive Piping Rock Club on Long Island’s North Shore, a Charles Blair Macdonald designed gem.

As you would expect from Plimpton, the book is well researched, intellectual and funny.  He was very well read and did extensive reading about the game while writing this book. He does a broad survey of golf literature within the book and quotes from, among others, Bernard Darwin.

While writing the book Plimpton played in a series of pro-ams in the late 1960s. He chose his golf courses well. After all, if you’re going to play in a tournament, why not play in the Bing Crosby and play both Pebble Beach and Cypress Point?

The book has a real period feel to it. This is the era of cocktail lounges, players hanging out at the bar together and when professional caddies still stood on the range shagging balls for their players. For those too young to remember, Plimpton reminds us how hard it was to play alongside Arnold Palmer. “Arnie’s Army” would begin moving as soon as he hit his shots, without regard to the other players in the group. Tiger Woods wasn’t the first one to generate this phenomenon.

His chapter on yips is illuminating; I never knew that Hogan, Snead and Vardon all suffered from a serious case of the yips.

When Plimpton died in 2003 his obituary called him a “gentleman editor, literary patron and participatory journalist”. The world of golf literature lost a great writer when Plimpton died.

 

 

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Walter Hagen Golf Books

Given a choice of somehow being able to be transported back in time to meet some of golf’s historical figures, Walter Hagen would be near the top of our list of those to meet. It’s also too bad Hagen didn’t live in the modern TV era – he was such a showman he would have been great for ratings and would have been a global media darling.

As a winner of 44 PGA events, including 11 major championships, Hagen currently ranks among the best players ever to have played the game. Hagen also played on five Ryder Cup teams and also served as captain of the American team.

Walter’s story is an interesting one; his curriculum vitae included serving as a car-repair man, wood-finisher, caddie, stock broker and golf professional including at The Oakland Hills Country Club in Michigan.

                   

With dust jacket and ‘Golfingly’ signature                   Dust Jacket of U.K. edition

The Walter Hagen Story was published as a first (and only U.S.) edition in 1956 by Simon & Schuster. The British first edition was published in 1957 by Heinemann. The book was also published in a special edition, which has 342 pages, the same number of pages as the original first edition and is identical in every way to the first edition except for the binding and the copyright page stating “Special Edition” instead of “First Printing.” Our research has not concluded why these special editions were printed.  

As told to Margaret Seaton Heck, this book is really a collection of stories and anecdotes that Walter recounts. It is his autobiography and is one of the earliest of its genre – that is, the autobiography of a sports star who isn’t articulate enough to write the book himself so has it written for him. As Hagen recounts in the book he “jumped out a window in the seventh grade and never went back to school.”

It is important to remember that in the early evolution of the game, golf was dominated by amateurs and not professionals. There was a big distinction between professionals, who were looked down upon, and amateurs, such as Bobby Jones, who were the real stars of the era. He recounts a story at the French Open where, at the time, they made professionals change clothes in the horse stable and they had to hang their clothes on nails. The story on pages 68-71 of how he showed up the hosts of the 1920 British Open, held at the Royal Cinque Ports Club at Deal is one of the most important in the history of professional golfers. It is no exaggeration to credit Walter with gaining equal footing for professionals vs. amateurs.

Walter enjoyed drinking, smoking and women and speaks throughout the book about “tipping the elbows at the grill” which is his shorthand for drinking. He even talks of drinking before matches including one during a U.S. Open he would go on to win. Tied for the lead, he stayed up all night and before teeing off has to “tip the elbows to stop the shaking.” A master of the psychology of the game, his take on staying up is that the rest of the field might have been in bed, but they most assuredly were simply tossing and turning and not sleeping. He felt it more restful to stay up rather than to toss and turn.

It is also interesting to remember that in the Jones-Hagen era you had to cross the ocean on a ship so playing in Europe was a big deal. The book has a definite 1950s feel to it, and the  romance associated with traveling on the Mauretania and the Aquitania.  He had a penchant for expensive cars, first class travel and chauffeurs. Walter didn’t drive, he motored. He went on “barnstorming” tours. He got “the heebie-jeebies”. He recounts one story at Pinehurst where he talks with an “old negro-mammy”. Sometimes the slang gets on your nerves: everyone is his buddy, pal or one of the guys.

Walter comes across as a combination of Donald Trump the promoter; John Daly the lifestyle and with talent every bit as good as Ben Hogan or Bobby Jones. We recommend the book highly; it is one of the most important, entertaining, enlightening and amusing stories in golf. Thankfully, the book is not a hole-by-hole and shot by shot analysis of each of his wins, which often times dominate the books of previous golf greats.

Signed Copies 

Copies of the Walter Hagen story are not particularly rare. The book was issued with a red jacket with a picture of Walter on the cover. It is very common for the jacket to be chipped or have pieces missing since the material that was used for the jackets is quite brittle. The British edition has a slightly different dust jacket (pictured above).

Ever the promoter, Walter signed a fair number of copies of the book, usually with the notation “Golfingly, Walter Hagen”. Signed copies of the book generally sell for about 10 times the price of unsigned copies. A reprint edition was also produced in 1977 to coincide with the Memorial Tournament. This reprint was limited to 250 copies and is done in embossed leather.

Other Books About or By Hagen 

There were two other soft cover booklets authored by Walter Hagen: Golf Clubs and How to use Them, published in Detroit in 1929, it is a 22 page pamphlet and is rare. The How and Why of Golf (pictured below) published in 1932 is a 32 page softcover publication and is also rare.

 

 

Sir Walter and Mr. Jones was written by Stephen R. Lowe and published in 2000 by the Sleeping Bear Press. A scholarly and well researched the book, it contains 41 pages of bibliographic notes in the rear. The book compares the two greats of golf’s Golden Era: Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen. The book gives a more balanced view of Walter’s life than his autobiography, especially the downside of spending all your time with the rich and famous. Walter the father, husband and business associate aren’t nearly as attractive as Walter the golfer. One of Hagen’s most proud moments though is when he beats Jones in the “the match of the century” in 1926 by an impressive 12 and 11, highlighted in the book. 

Sir Walter by Thomas Clavin is the first full biography of Hagen. While writing a biography about Hagen is a tough task because it would be hard to be more colorful than the Haig, Clavin does a good job, especially putting Hagen’s achievements from the 1920s in their proper context.

While not exclusively about Hagen, The World’s Championship Golfers: Their Art Disclosed by the Ultra-Rapid Camera, First Series was published in 1924 by George W. Beldam. This was a series of 11 books each featuring a different golfer. One of the golfers featured was Walter Hagen and he is shown in a photographic analysis.  Joe Kirkwood, Hagen’s traveling companion and fellow golf performer authored Links of Life in 1973 and the book recounts many a Walter story.  

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Golf Reference Books for Collectors

At first, they appear to be typographical errors in a listing to sell a book: M, D&M, D&J. Perhaps a fat finger across the keyboard? Well, in fact, they are not typographical errors, but abbreviated references to books that catalog other golf books. Any serious collector of golf books should be familiar with these invaluable reference books.

The father of the modern day golf reference book is Joseph Murdoch, whose 1968 volume The Library of Golf 1743-1966 was an important milestone in cataloging golf books. Murdoch used a simple numbering system, listing books in alphabetical order by the authors last name, from 1 through 899. As an example, the citation, “M408” refers to Bobby Jones’s Down the Fairway, which was the 408^th book listed in Murdoch’s bibliography. 

Another frequently cited golf reference book was a collaboration between Joseph Murdoch and Richard Donovan, which you will see listed as D & M. Donovan and Murdoch’s The Game of Golf and the Printed Word 1566-1985 was published in 1987. It organizes books alphabetically by author as well as within four golfing eras, corresponding to the type of ball used at that time. Donovan and Murdoch list 4,800 entries. The last and most comprehensive of the golf reference books were produced in 2006 by Richard Donovan and Rand Jerris, abbreviated as D & J. This two volume set covers all English language golf books published between 1566-2005. The bibliography catalogs over 15,000 titles, including over 2,500 club histories. 

1.      The Library of Golf 1743-1966. A Bibliography of Golf Books, Indexed Alphabetically, Chronologically, & by Subject Matter. Published by Gale Research Company, Detroit, 1968.  Joseph S.F. Murdoch.  Published with slipcase. Rare and expensive but indispensable since it offers editorial comments.

 2.      The Game of Golf and the Printed Word 1566-1985. Richard E. Donovan and Joseph S.F. Murdoch. Published in 1987. This book is a bibliography of every book on the game the authors could find. 

 

3.      Game of Golf and the Printed Word 1566-2005 (2 volumes pictured above). By Richard Donovan and Rand Jerris. A bibliography of golf literature in the English language in 942 pages. The book(s) are organized in alphabetical order by author.  Includes an index of club histories organized by state and country. Interspersed throughout the listings are little blurbs describing historical figures in golf, helping to put them or their works in context. Donovan’s partner is this venture, Rand Jerris, is responsible for the USGA golf library. A tour de force for the collector.  The three books listed above are also useful to help determine a book’s edition, whether it was issued with a dustjacket and other facts about the book’s issue. Aside from these three broad-based reference books, there are several other books that look at specific niche or collecting specialties: 

4.      The Golf Murders: A Readers and Collectors Guide to Golf Mystery Fiction: An Annotated and Illustrated Bibliography. Thomas F. Taylor, Published in 1997, limited edition of 400, issued with a protective slipcase, signed by the author. This book focuses on 160 mystery novels and gives a summary of the plot for each. 

5.      Rusty Staples or Aspects of Collecting Golf Instruction Booklets was written by Henri Jakubowicz and published in 2004 by Rhod McEwan Publishing. This very handsomely produced book focuses on a niche area of collecting: booklets dedicated to golf instruction. Thus, the origin of the title, since many of these booklets are bound together by staples. It was produced in a limited edition of only 72 copies and with a beautiful green slipcase and very high quality color pictures of every booklet. 

 

6.      The Golfers Library by Daniel Wexler. Published in 2004. Not a comprehensive index of books, more an interesting summary profile of 400 of the most commonly seen and collected titles. 

7.      Aspects of Collecting Golf Books. Published in 1996 by Grant, Droitwich. Limited to 425 copies. Quirky and not comprehensive. 

8.      Collecting Golf Books, 1743-1938. Published in 1938 by Constable London and written by Cecil Hopkinson. A survey of books that Hopkinson, a London bookseller, compiled based on his experience. Reprint of Collecting Golf Books to which has been added bibliotheca golfiana together with some notes and commentary by Joseph S.F. Murdoch. Published in 1980 Grant Books, limited to 250 copies. 

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Wayne Stiles Golf Architecture Book

We are always on the hunt for new, interesting and (often) obscure golf books. These books usually aren’t for sale in retail book stores or at amazon.com, abebooks.com or other on-line sites.  A newly issued book just came to our attention that fits into this category.

The book is The Life and Work of Wayle Stiles. Stiles was a golf course architect who worked primarily in New England. I have been a golf enthusiast all my life, and admittedly, had never heard of Stiles before learning of this book.

The excerpt below is taken from the website of the Wayne Stiles society:

“Massachusetts-based golf course and landscape architect Wayne Stiles compiled an impressive body of work during a 40-year career. Starting as a draftsman with Brett & Hall of Boston, Stiles established his own firm in 1915 and a year later planned the Nashua Country Club in New Hampshire, the first of more than 145 courses he was involved with.

This 304-page, full-color, 8 ½ x 11, hard cover, dust jacketed volume details his personal life, competitive career, landscape architecture work and his golf course portfolio. Filled with more than 500 illustrations—including historic photographs, modern images, scorecards, postcards, drawings, plans and architectural renderings—the book details the 76 courses that still exist, in addition to dozens that have disappeared or been radically altered by other course designers or the passage of time”

The book is available from the Wayne Stiles society, with the proceeds of the book used for a college fund for one of the co-authors who, sadly, was recently diagnosed with ALS.

Wayne Stiles Book

Early Golf Books with Dust Jackets

As serious collectors are aware, the presence of a dust jacket increases a book’s value, sometimes dramatically. This is especially true of early golf books. There is a long held belief among collectors that certain seminal works in golf literature were published without dust jackets. We include in this category George Thomas’s Golf Architecture in America and Robert Hunter’s The Links. In fact, they were published with dust jackets as we will review in this month’s newsletter.

 First, we think a short, generic history of dust jackets would be in order to put the discussion in proper perspective. The original intention of the dust jacket was to protect the book while it remained in the possession of the bookseller. They were viewed as throw-away items and not to be used for the life of the book. Typically, they were made of cheaper quality paper or manila paper, often times without the name of the book printed on them. In the 1890s dust jackets began to evolve to include the name of the book and author on them, but still did not have any design or illustrations. Early dust jackets that serve the same function we know of today, with illustrations, etc. started to appear at the turn of the century but were not prevalent until after World War I. Longmans, Green, a British publisher was one of the earliest to issue jackets. Their book Keepsake, published in 1832 is one of the earliest known books to be issued with a dust jacket.[i] 

 

 

 

 

,As a service to our clients we have compiled a list below of golf books that are known to have been published in a jacket. Since golf reference books such as Murdoch do not list the presence of jackets, we believe this is the first time a comprehensive list has been published. We do not claim that the list is exhaustive or complete since it is difficult to ascertain whether books published so long ago were issued with jackets. And, we have learned that in this business, you should never say never. Lurking in someone’s attic somewhere is a yet to be discovered copy of an early golf book with a dust jacket in fine condition. That’s why we find collecting golf books to be such an interesting pastime. And please, if you own or know of early titles that have jackets that are not on this list let us know since we plan to keep an active list on our web-site.

 

When did jackets more from being a repetition of the cover or plain to different? The earliest golf book we could find with a dust jacket was Drives and Puts by Walter Camp, published in 1899. No, that is not a typo, the title of the book is spelled puts. Below is the list our research has been able to discover: [UPDATE, MAY 2008 we have been informed of a copy of The Golfer's Alphabet by Sutphen, published in 1898 by Harper Brothers with a dust jacket.]

 

Published	Title	Author	Publisher
1899	Drives and Puts	W. Camp	L.C. Page
1900	The Book of Golf and Golfers[ii]	H.G. Hutchinson	Longmans, Green
1902	Golf	W.G. Brown	Houghton, Mifflin
	Golf: The Badminton Library[iii]	H.G. Hutchinson	Longmans, Green
	Taylor on Golf	J.H. Taylor	Hutchinson
1905	Golf Faults Illustrated[iv]	G. Beldam	George Newnes
1906	Picturesque Musselburgh and Its Links	W.C. Maughan	R. Gemmell Hutchinson
1909	The New Golfers Almanac	W.L. Stoddard	Houghton, Mifflin
1910	Golf Courses of the British Isles[v]	B. Darwin	Duckworth
	Golf Curios and the Like	H.B. Wood	Sheratt & Hughes
1912	The Book of the Links	M. Sutton	W.H. Smith & Son
1915	Pro and Con of Golf	A. Revell	Rand McNally
1916	The New Golf	P.A. Vaile	E.P. Dutton
1917	Dormie One	H. Hall	The Century Co.
1918	Fore!	C. Van Loan	George H. Doran
1919	Super Golf	H.K. Browning	Simpkin, Marshall
	Golf’s Little Ironies	H. Fulford	Simpkin, Marshall
	Fifty Years of Golf	H. Hutchinson	Country Life
1920	Progressive Golf	H. Vardon	Hutchinson
	Golf Architecture	A. Mackenzie	Simpkin, Marshall
	Enchanted Golf Clubs	R. Marshall	Alexander Moring
	Pictorial Golf	H.B. Martin	Dodd, Mead
	Some Essays on Golf Course Architecture	Colt and Alison	Country Life
1921	The Complete Golfer(later edition)	H. Vardon	Methuen
1922	The Clicking of Cuthbert	P.G. Wodehouse	Herbert Jenkins
	Golf for Beginners	G. Campbell	C. Arthur Pearson
	The Psychology of Golf	L. Schon	Methuen
	Golf	C. Leicth
	Present Day Golf	G. Duncan	Hodder & Stoughton
	On the Green	S.J. Looker	Daniel O’Connor
	The Gist of Golf	H. Vardon	George H. Doran
1923	Driving, Approaching, Putting	E. Ray	R.M. McBride
	Adventures in Golf	H.M. Bateman	Methuen
	Lyrics of the Links	F.B. Keene	D. Appleton
	Epic of Golf	C. Scollard	Houghton, Mifflin
	Humours of Golf	W.H. Robinson	Methuen
	The Principles of Golf	M.J. Astle	Chambers
	Common Sense Golf	W.J. Thompson	Thomas Allen
	So This is Golf	H.L.Wilson<