The National Sporting Library in Middleburg, Virginia will be the venue for the launch of Martha Wolfe’s new book, The Great Hound Match of 1905: Alexander Henry Higginson, Harry Worcester Smith, and the Rise of Virginia Hunt Country, on Sunday, November 8, 2015 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. Martha will speak and sign copies of her book.

In November 1905, the peak of foxhunting season across the Midlands of England and up and down the east coast of North America, two tiny towns in Virginia’s Piedmont, poor and nearly forgotten after the Civil War and a recent depression, saw the coming of illustrious and wealthy foxhunters to raise their hopes. There was to be a contest, a Great Hound Match, between two packs of foxhounds, one English and one American. This book, the story of an audacious contest between men cut from very different cloth and their hounds carved from very different stock, chronicles a metaphorical battle in America’s coming of age—her psychic independence from Britain’s lingering shroud at the turn of the 20th century.

Admission is $5, free to NSLM members. Please RSVP to Anne Marie Barnes at the National Sporting Library or call 540-687-6542, extension 25.

Posted October 23, 2015