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	Cosmopolitan
1924	Golf Without Tears	P.G. Wodehouse	George H. Doran
	Gene Sarazen’s Common Sense Golf Tips	G. Sarazen	Thos. E. Wilson Co.
	Golf Simplified	C. Leitch	Thornton Butterworth
	The Modern Golfer	C. J.H. Tolley	Alfred A. Knopf
1925	Golfing Reminiscences	W.F. Reid	J. & J. Gray
	Locker Room Ballads	W.H. Webling	Brentano’s
	The Autobiography of an Average Golfer	O.B. Keeler	Greenberg Publishers
	Golf for Young Players	G. Collett	Little, Brown
	The Basis of the Golf Swing	J. Forrest	Thomas Murby
1926	The Fifth Estate	J. Travers	Alfred A. Knopf
	The Links	R. Hunter	Charles Scribner’s Sons
	How to Play Golf (19th edition)	H. Vardon	Methuen
	Golf for Young Players	G. Collett	Little, Brown
1927	Golf Architecture in America	G. Thomas	Times-Mirror Press
	Down The Fairway	R. T. Jones	Minton Balch & Co.
	The Architectural Side of Golf	J. Wethered	Longmans, Green
1928	Green Memories	B. Darwin	Hodder & Stoughton
1930	Second Shots	B. Darwin	George Newnes
1931	Golf	H. Cotton	Eyre and Spottiswoode
1932	The Game of Golf	F. Ouimet	Houghton, Mifflin

 

The illustration below is of Bernard Darwin’s Golf Courses of the British Isles in a dust jacket. This is typical of the jackets of the period, which, unlike jackets of today, replicate the design of the cover.

 

 How much does the presence of a jacket increase the value of a book? Partly, it depends on the condition of the jacket. Since these jackets are in some instances over one hundred years old, it is difficult to find them in good condition. Often, they are understandably torn or worn. As an example of the difference in value we come back to Thomas’s Golf Architecture in America. Generally a very good copy of this title sells for between $650 and $1,000. Three copies have sold at auction with dust jackets over the last ten years for $2,000, $3,000 and $4,800. Robert Hunter’s The Links generally sells in the $600-$700 range in very good condition. Two editions with dust jackets have sold for above $1,000 in the last two years. A first edition of Wodehouse’s The Clicking of Cuthbert is worth conservatively at least $1,000 more with the jacket. 

 

Valuable Book Group’s website

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[i] Book-Jackets, Blurbs and Bibliographers. G. Thomas Tanselle. London, The Bibliographical Society, 1971.

[ii] This is the third edition, published in 1900. The first edition and second impression were published in 1899. Dust jacket is plain brown in color with the name of the book on the spine.

[iii] The 1911 edition of Badminton Golf was also issued with a jacket. Both are “Amazon” orange in color and replicate the design of the book

[iv] Plain brown dust jacket with the name of the book in black lettering on the front cover and spine

[v] The dust jacket is grey and repeats the misspelling of the illustrator whose first name rowntree should be roundtree. The 1925 second edition, titled The Golf Courses of Great Britain was also issued with a jacket.