Author: Alfred Jacques Florimond [Comte de Basterot] (1800 - 1887)
Year: 1852
Publisher: Allouard et Kaeppelin
Place: Paris
Description:
iv+372 pages with frontispiece and figures. Small octavo (7 1/8" x 4 1/2") bound in half leather over marbled boards with five raised spine bands with lettering in gilt. Includes history of chess literature, the automation and knights tour. (van der Linde: 811). First edition.
Comte Florimond Alfred Jacques was a traveler and ethnographer. His family had come to Galway when his ancestor Bartholomew de Basterot, president of the Bordeaux Parliament, had married the heiress Frances French in 1770 He was an acquaintance of W B Yeats and according to Yates in his memoirs, de Basterot was "paralyzed from the waist down through sexual excess in youth", and spent "his old age in the duties of religion and in attending chapel. Arthur Symons described de Basterot as a "strange, attractive figure, the traveler, the student of race, the student of history, with his courtly violence, his resolute pieties'. Information on the author of this work was gleaned from Sarah's Chess Journal and the collected letters of W B Yeats.
Condition:
Previous owner's book plate on front paste down, end papers toned. some foxing. A very good copy of a scarce item.
SOLD 2023