Plan to spend a lovely morning or afternoon in Middleburg before May 15th to see the National Sporting Library's current exhibit, "Afternoon Delights," a refined mix of charming book illustrations, ephemera and framed pieces focused on the delightful times one may enjoy in the equine world.

Housed in the F. Ambrose Clark Rare Book Room in the Forrest E. Mars, Senior Exhibit Hall, the exhibit elegantly captures steeplechase racing, a parade of toffs and commoners and several illustrations depicting the antics at a school for uninspiring horsemen.

All the illustrations on display are normally sequestered in the rare book room.

The central case features the Inaugural Llangollen Race, 1931, a sketchbook of 15 illustrations by Paul Brown recording a historic day in American steeplechase racing. The original race program, a magazine article from Polo magazine, and the annual chart book further document the race.

Two copies of the book The Legend of the Hounds by George Henry Boker, 1929, are accompanied by eight framed illustrations by Gordon Ross. Three different editions of Geoffrey Gambado's An Academy for Grown Horsemen (1787) are opened to hand-colored tongue-in-cheek illustrations of poor horsemanship.

One case holds a number of illustrated 19th-century books on boxing. A hand-colored panorama, mounted on the wall, is partially unfolded, revealing an early 19th-century "parade" of toffs and commoners on their way to an illegal fight. The panorama is unfolded to 7 feet.

Afternoon Delights is open to the public during normal library hours, which are Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. Curatorial Assistant Brenna Elliott and Librarian Lisa Campbell curated the exhibition.

The National Sporting Library and Fine Art Museum is a non-lending research center for horse and field sports. It is open to the public and admission is free.

Its 17,000-book collection covers a wide range of horse and field sports, including foxhunting, thoroughbred racing, dressage, eventing, steeplechasing, polo, coaching, shooting, and angling. Over 4,000 rare books from the sixteenth century onwards are housed in the F. Ambrose Clark Rare Book Room.

In addition to books, the Library owns important manuscripts, archives, and periodicals relating to field sports, and also features an audiovisual collection that includes films, videos, and DVDs.

The John H. Daniels Fellowship program supports the research of visiting scholars. The Library hosts temporary art exhibitions and holds many fine works of sporting art, including paintings, sculpture, and works-on-paper in its permanent collection.

The Fine Art Museum will open in 2011 on the Library campus in the historic Vine Hill mansion, with 11 galleries featuring temporary exhibits and the Museum's permanent collection of American & European fine sporting art.

Admission to "Afternoon Delights" is free. The National Sporting Library is located at 102 The Plains Rd., in Middleburg, Va. For more information and directions, call 540-687-6542 or visit the NSL's website at www.nsl.org.