[Charles James Apperley]. English sportsman and sporting writer, known as “Nimrod,” the pseudonym under which he published his works on the chase and the turf; born at Plasgronow, near Wrexham, in Denbighshire. Between the years 1805 and 1820 he devoted himself to fox-hunting. About 1821 he began to contribute to the Sporting Magazine, under the pseudonym of “Nimrod,” a series of racy articles, which helped to double the circulation of the magazine in a year or two. The proprietor, Mr. Pittman, kept for “Nimrod” a stud of hunters, and defrayed all expenses of his tours, besides giving him a handsome salary. The death of Mr. Pittman, however, led to a lawsuit with the proprietors of the magazine for money advanced, and Apperley, to avoid imprisonment, had to take up his residence near Calais (1830), where he supported himself by his writings. He died in London on the 19th of May 1843. The most important of his works are the following: Remarks on the Condition of Hunters, the Choice of Horses, &c. (1831); The Chase, the Turf, and the Road (originally written for the Quarterly Review) (1837); Memoirs of the Life of the Late John Mytton (1837); Nimrod’s Northern Tour (1838); Nimrod Abroad (1842); The Horse and the Hound (a reprint from the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica) (1842); Hunting Reminiscences (1843). See also Cambridge History.
