The author of this rare volume, John Beaufain Irving, was born in Jamaica in 1800, and received his early education at Rugby School and Cambridge University in England. He immigrated to the United States and studied medicine in Philadelphia, and in 1823 applied for a license to practice medicine in South Carolina. A rice planter, physician, and author, Irving was associated with Russell's Magazine, edited a short-lived Charleston periodical called The Rambler, and was a fellow journalist with William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870).

Irving's A Day on Cooper River (1851), Local Events and Incidents at Home (1850), and The South Carolina Jockey Club earned a place for him among South Carolina writers. A devotee of horseracing, Irving also served for thirty years as secretary of the South Carolina Jockey Club, and after the destruction of his plantation in the Civil War, Irving moved to New Jersey and was a manager of the Jockey Club of New York.

The South Carolina Jockey Club is a history of horseracing in colonial and antebellum South Carolina, and records in complete detail the public history of one of the ruling passions of the south. It is a compendium of information on races, jockeys, racehorses, and owners, as well as a Who's Who of lowcountry planter aristocracy.

This copy of South Carolina Jockey Club is bound in red leather, gold-stamped, and contains the bookplate of George Gordon Murray. The original, gold-stamped cloth boards are bound with the volume. This first edition also contains a woodblock print by H. Bosse of the clubhouse of the Washington Race Course created from a daguerreotype by D.L. Glen of Charleston.

Biography courtesy of The Charleston Renaissance Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/charleston