MODERN BREECH-LOADERS: SPORTING AND MILITARY. By W.W. Greener.

1871 1st edition. Small 8vo (130 x 196mm). Ppxvi,256,16[ads]. B/w engravings, tables, folding chart. Gilt rifles motif and black ruled borders to blue cloth, gilt motifs and titles to spine.

This was W.W. Greener's first book. It was based on his father's Gunnery in 1858 which was never published owing to Greener senior's death. "The numerous inquiries made by subscribers to that work. and others wishing to possess it, cause[d] the Author to feel it incumbent on him, as his father's successor, to publish this treatise on Modern Breech-loaders." The pace of development in firearms was remarkable, and Greener junior had to revise and expand his father's work to account for it. The pace of development was so great that W.W. Greener subsequently produced a larger book, The Gun and Its Development, which ran to nine editions between 1881 and 1910. Modern Breech-Loaders presents "the important and numerous improvements which have recently been made in the construction of the breech-loader, sporting and military (especially the latter)." Chapters include: Introduction of the breech-loading system; Central-fire guns; Gunpowder; Breech-loading revolvers and double-barrel pistols; Military breech-loading rifles and cartridges. Riling 908.