As promised, two recently added vintage books…
Twenty-Two Caliber Varmint Rifles, C.S. Landis. Small Arms Technical Publishing Company, 1947. Riling 2602. This has the Plantersville, SC imprint and an advertising page dated December 1946: per the Smith bibliography, these points indicate a first printing. There is a known second printing around 1952.
I’d call this “good”, but I think short of “very good”. The jacket has about a 2″ tear just at the right hand edge (it’s hard to see unless you’re looking at the edge closely), there’s some large nicks to the top and bottom of the spine, and some wear to the top and bottom jacket edges. In spite of those flaws, I still feel this is a nice copy: as far as I can tell, none of the listed copies on ABE even have a dust jacket, and the book itself is clean with no dings or damage I can see.
Judge Charles S. Landis (as Smith refers to him) is one of those folks Mr. Samworth worked with a lot: he also published Landis’s .22 Caliber Rifle Shooting and Hunting With the Twenty-Two. (Several people published three books with SATPCO: the only person who published four was Townsend Whelen, and one of those was a two-volume work.) I can’t find a lot of biographical information on Judge Landis, such as exactly where and what his judgeship was. (it looks like he was from Delaware, based on his introductions). Smith generally gives some information if it is available, so he may have run into the same problem. It seems like Judge Landis was a fan of .22 caliber rifles, especially the wildcat .22 cartridges of the period, and of varmint hunting.
Those wildcats are the main focus of Twenty-Two Caliber Varmint Rifles. While he does devote a lengthy chapter to “Commercial Varmint .22 Cartridges” (such as the .22 Hornet and the .220 Swift) most of his coverage seems to be the wildcats from such folks as Ackley and Niedner, and building rifles for those cartridges: selecting actions, making barrels, chambering them, and developing loads.
Woodchucks and Woodchuck Rifles, C.S. Landis. Greenberg: Publisher, New York, 1951. Oddly enough, this isn’t a Samworth, and is too late to be covered in the Riling bibliography, so I can’t tell you that much about it. I suspect SATPCO didn’t publish this one since they had already published The Woodchuck Hunter (Paul C. Estey) in 1936, so Mr. Samworth may have felt he had the market covered. (But he’d already published one of Landis’s books at that time, so why didn’t he go back to that well again?)
This is another book I’d describe as “good” but short of “very good”. There are some chips missing from the top and bottom of the spine, a little bit of wear on the top and bottom edges, and some wear marks on the right hand edge of the cover. But again, the book itself is clean.
An Internet search indicates Greenberg was acquired by Chilton in 1958. It seems like they published at least a few gun and hunting books under the “Gun Room Library” brand, including the first edition of the Riling bibliography and something called Snyder’s Book of Big Game Hunting which sounds fun. (The rear jacket flap quotes Synder’s first line: “Take a snifter from this 40-ounce crock of over-proof Scotch — and we’ll start.”)
The book seems to be pretty much what you’d expect (I haven’t read it yet): notes on hunting woodchucks, and selecting guns for same. It includes chapters on the author’s own wildcat round, the “.170 Landis Woodsman”, and a guest chapter on “Woodchuck Hunting Across America With Parker O. Ackley”. I don’t know what the woodchuck situation is in Texas, and I’ve never hunted chuck, but (as you know, Bob) I am kind of interested in the weird small bore wildcat cartridges.
Aren’t those great cover paintings? I almost want to frame the dust jackets. Gayle Hoskins did the covers for both of these books. (I think this might be the same Gayle Hoskins, since he was also a Delaware guy, and based on some information in Smith’s bibliography.) SATPCO did at one point dabble in producing art prints as well. They did runs of two different paintings by Mr. Hoskins (“Trade From the Monogahela” and “The Rifle Frolic“) before Samworth dropped the project. I’ve never seen one for sale, but maybe after I complete the book collection, I’ll start pursuing those.
These two books were purchased as a package (with cover protectors) from my book buddy in the Association for $110.
Next time: we’ll be getting a little closer to Christmas, and I think I may have another gift idea for those you know who are People Of the Gun. (Hi, Scoutito!)