Robert Mauvy

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A rare photo of French master-breeder Robert Mauvy in his later days. Courtesy of Pierre-Henri Beillard, a disciple of Mauvy and the owner the splendid Mauvy-bred stallion Moulouki (Amri x Izarra by David). Mauvy’s little book “Le Cheval Arabe” is in my opinion, the most beautiful and passionate piece ever written in defense of the real Arabian horse of the desert. Neither Anne Blunt’s writing nor Carl Raswan’s compare to his in their intensity and inspirational power. Not even close.

20 Replies to “Robert Mauvy”

  1. Does anyone know where this book can be found? I would love to read it from Edouard’s description.

    To be fair, I think Lady Blunt wrote primarily to record rather than inspire. She strove to be as accurate in matters of fact as possible,flourishes were kept to a minimum, she also had great personal integrity always ready to correct her own previous misunderstandings,(that is my view anyway judging from her journals and correspondence and the part of Lady Wentworths ‘Authentic Arabian Horse’ which is taken from her mother’s notes).
    ‘Her’ books, ‘Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates’ and ‘Pilgrimage to Nejd’, were of course mangled, sorry, ‘edited’ by her husband,fascinating though they still are to read.

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  2. The book is out of print. Of course, you’re right about every point you make. I was being unfair to her. That said, I you knew nothing about Arabian horses, it is not likely you’d come to love them because of Lady Anne Blunt’s writings (last third of her Journals aside); but if you knew nothing about Arabians, I can tell you that reading Mauvy’s book would make you love them when you see them. Or perhaps that was the case because it was the first Arabian horse book I read. Not sure. In any case, the reads that came after him seemed trite.

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  3. Oh I’d love to find a copy!
    Though I don’t need inspiring, (I am already obsessed :)), it certainly sounds like a book worth searching for, thanks for alerting me to it.

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  5. Hi Jeanne
    Well he was certainly heavy handed, as Lady Anne herself complained re ‘her’ books, but yes I agree I don’t think that Lady Wentworth quite inherited her mother’s integrity or devotion to the actual truth!!
    However that would have no bearing on Lady Anne’s published Journals and Correspondence.
    I would love to see the ‘fragments’ that were to make up Lady Anne’s uncompleted horse book, be published, unadulterated, though I still feel that there is much of interest from this work in The Authentic Arabian Horse that Lady Wentworth would have had no cause to ‘edit’.

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  6. If you work through what was in the Book of Fragments, and piece it together from Lady Anne’s journal entries as published, it was a major work, and to have it gone is just one of the great tragedies of Arabian history.

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  8. Let’s focus, guys — Where can one get a copy of Mauvy’s book — hopefully in English? If one can be located in French I think we could pool resources to find a way to translate it into English, don’t you think?

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  9. Robert Mauvy’s book is extremely difficult to find, even in France. It has been sold out since a long time.
    And unfortunately, it has never been translated into english.
    But sometimes you can find one to be sold on amazon.com or priceminister.com or on Philippe Deblaise’s website : http://www.philippica.net/presentation.html.
    It will be really exceptionnal if somebody could translate it into english.

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  12. Can anyone with a copy of the book tell me the original copyright date? (Since Lisa bought that copy, the information has gone offline. 🙂

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  13. Hi, I’m Robert Mauvy grand-grand-son and I have no idea where to find his book. I’ll ask my family if they have some copies left.

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