This week Bob Crosby and I spent most of a day in New York looking through old original copies of London's "Field" magazine from the old days for some specific articles.
I'd never seen London's "Field" magazine before but I did grow up with England's "Country Life" magazine.
First of all, in my opinion, "Field" was about five times more written and directed at the GB rural aristocracy of the old "estate/farm" culture and all that that particular world meant socially, recreationally and economically. The "Field" probably has about ten times more content in it too in that regard than "Country Life" magazine ever did.
One thing that struck me about the size of that weekly magazine and the remarkably small print of it was that culture must have had a ton of time to read! Those weekly magazines were essentially the content size of a medium-sized book.
The topics covered weekly were also voluminous and some almost hilarious---eg "Kenneling", "Coursing", "Canoeing", and numerous other estate and sporting recreations I've barely heard of.
Golf always had a section too, although it appears perhaps 75% of the time it was dedicated to tournment reporting.
But when it wasn't it had some very sophisticated articles about golf architecture---eg a six part "series" on the philosophy of bunkers and bunkering. Believe me, this website would be fascinated in that series and discussing what it said back then and the similarity of what's discussed in that vein on here today.
But the thing that struck me, as good and as sophisticated as was some of the writing and content, was the writers were almost always anonymous. The only hint the magazine gave of who these people were writing for the "Field" about golf was that they were a 'team of experts'.
Of course for Bob and I that's somewhat maddening. We suspected one of them had to be Charles Ambrose even if he did write at least one article we saw under his own name. But that particular article was not much more than a quoted reprint of someone else's named article in another magazine.
Who were those golf writers and why did they so often not use their names or even byline pseudonyms in the "Field" back then?
In American, in some of the old golf magazines such as American Golfer and Golf Illustrated they frequently used byline pseudonyms and sometimes pretty humorous ones but very infrequently used their actual names. We probably know who most of them were such as Tillinghast as "Hazard" or perhaps "Joe Bunker" or even "Billy Bunker".
Many on this website don't like pseudonyms or anonymity but who really cares and why did they use both so often back then?
Did it allow them to write more honestly and openly and critically?
I'd say so, and thank God for it! but I still wish I knew more about who those writers back then really were.
