Author: Philippe Ambroise Durand (1799-1880), Louis Metton and Jean-Louis Preti
Year: 1868
Publisher: Chez Jean Preti and Chez Barthes and Lowell
Place: Paris and London
Description:
402 pages with diagrams and errata. Octavo (9" x 5 3/4") bound in original publisher's pictorial wrappers. Volume two in the series. (Bibliotheca Van der Linde-Niemeijeriana: 1801) Second edition.
This volume covers opening games, mostly gambits including Queen's Gambit, Center Counter Gambit, King's Gambit etc; as well as a brief history of the key writers of works of chess starting with Vincent et Lucena going to the present period of 1868.
Philippe Ambroise Durand was a French abbé and chess writer. Born in Fresné-la-Mère, Calvados, he was professor of rhetoric at Falaise and later taught philosophy at Lisieux before retiring in 1860. Durand collaborated with Jean-Louis Preti to write three books on chess, including the two-volume Stratégie raisonnée des fins de partie (1871–73). These were the first books devoted to the practical endgame, and included concepts such as conjugate squares and the opposition. He is also said to have coined the chess term trébuchet.
Condition:
Spine cracked and chipped, mostly unread with pages still to be separated, wrappers becoming detached else a good copy, internally very good.