Pugilistica

The history of “the Ring,” its rise and progress, the deeds of the men whose manly courage illustrate its contests in the days of its prosperity and popularity, with the story of its decline and fall, as yet remain unwritten. The author proposes in the pages which follow to supply this blank in the home-records of the English people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The space covered in these volumes extends over one hundred and forty-four years, from the time when James Fig (the first acknowledged champion) opened his amphitheatre in the Oxford Road, in May, 1719, to the championship battle between John Camel Heenan, the American, and Tom King, the English champion, at Wadhurst, in Kent, on the 10th of December, 1863.

The author trusts he may claim, without laying himself open to a charge of egotism, exceptional qualifications for the task he has undertaken. His acquaintance with the doings of the Ring, and his personal knowledge of the most eminent professors of pugilism, extend over a retrospect of more than forty years. For a considerable portion of that period he was the reporter of its various incidents in Bell’s Life in London, in the Morning Advertiser, and various periodical publications which, during the better days of its career, gave a portion of their space to chronicle its doings. That the misconduct of its members, the degeneracy and dishonesty of its followers led to the deserved extinction of the Ring, he is free to admit: still, as a septuagenarian, he desires to preserve the memory of many brave and honourable deeds which the reader will here find recorded.

A few lines will suffice to elucidate the plan of the work.

Having decided that its most readable form would be that of a series of biographies of the principal boxers, in chronological order, so far as practicable, it was found convenient to group them in “Periods;” as each notable champion will be seen to have visibly impressed his style and characteristics on the period in which he and his imitators, antagonists or, as we may call it, “school” flourished in popular favour and success.