22, 2-3 pp. 8¼x5, removed with stitching on spine, in 20th century custom-made calf folding box. Second Edition.
Second edition of the first separately printed book devoted wholly to the game of golf, considered the rarest of the three 18th century editions of the work, the cornerstone of any golf library. All three editions were published in Edinburgh, the first in 1743, this one in 1763, and the third in 1793. In his introduction to the 1981 facsimile edition of the three printings published by the United States Golf Association, Stephen Ferguson, Curator of Rare Books at Princeton University Library, records only three copies in libraries: at the British Library, the U.S.G.A. Library, and the Professional Golfers Association of America Library. One other copy is known to be in private hands in addition to this one, and it may be destined to an institution. The poem itself, of 358 lines in 3 cantos, is a picaresque description of a match between two golfers played at the five-hole links at Leith. The protagonists are “Pygmalion” (the author) and “Castilio” (Alexander Dunning, of Edinburgh, a bookseller, thought by C.B. Clapcott to be Mathison’s brother-in-law). It was not until some 80 years after the first publication of The Goff that the second work solely devoted to golf was produced, The Rules of the Thistle Club, published in 1824. Joseph Murdoch, premier golf book collector, wrote of The Goff “Standing alone in a century of silence, the first book entirely devoted to golf was published in 1743, more that twenty years after Glotta [James Arbuckle’s 1721 poem with mention of golf) and ninety years before another book would appear. It, too, is poetry, and one of the classics of golf literature. The ultimate that any collector can attain is to have one of its three editions in his library.” The author of The Goff, Thomas Mathison, was a law clerk who later turned to golf, poetry, and the Presbyterian ministry; he died in 1754. The final leaf of the book, numbered 2-3, continues a list of books, plays, poems, &c. sold by James Reid, which begins at the foot of p.22. Murdoch, The Library of Golf, 503; Donovan & Murdoch 370; Donovan & Jerris M13090. Provenance: Collection of Tim Smartt of the U.K., to the present owner. It should be noted that this may well be the last and only chance to secure a copy of this edition.