Author: Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant (1800-1872)
Year: 1844
Publisher: Bureau de la Revue au Cercle des Echecs
Place: Paris
Description:
576 pages with frontispiece portrait, diagrams, illustrations and index. Royal octavo (9 1/4" x 6") bound in half leather with four raised spine bands with gilt lettering over marbled boards. Volume four of the second era. (Bibliotheca Van der Linde-Niemeijeriana: 6013) First edition.
In 1836, fans of Cafe de la Regence at the French Place du Theatre in Paris, and friends of Louis Charles Mahe De La Bourdonnais, decided to create a magazine, named Le Palamede, which would show the beauty on the game of chess. The French, recognized as the best players in the world; since, in 1834 La Bourdonnais met Irish master Alexander MacDonnell in a series of six matches, with La Bourdonnais winning (+45, =13, -27) overall, and created a fervor for the game not only in England but France as well. The publication began in 1836 and the premature death of the Bourdonnais in 1840, interrupted for two years the publication of Palamedes, before it was revived in December 1841 by Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant, his successor in the supremacy of the Cafe de la Regence; who continued publishing it until the end of 1847. The magazine lived another five years, with nearly 300 subscribers, before dying in 1847. It was named after Palamedes, the inventor of dice in Greek mythology.
Condition: Corners bumped and rubbed, some edge bumped, some foxing, small chip to spine head else about very good.