The School of Fencing with a General Explanation of the Principal Attitudes and Positions peculiar to the Art.

London: [for the author,], 1787. Fencing as an improving sport First octavo edition of Domenico Angelo's renowned guide to swordsmanship, first issued as a sumptuous folio in 1763, and undoubtedly one of the most important fencing works ever published. This edition was the first with the text in English only. Domenico Angelo won the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke and introduced swordplay to George III and his children. His pupils included the actor David Garrick, the artist Joshua Reynolds, and the radical activist John Wilkes. Richard Sheridan and Thomas Gainsborough were members of his salle, as was Johann Christian Bach (son of the great composer). The 1763 folio was "the most lavishly illustrated fencing book since Thubault's in 1628... it was endlessly plagiarized and imitated but was far from being just a book of pictures: it argued that fencing should be seen as a sport, practised to improve one's physique" (Cohen, pp. 82-3). Angelo posed as model for the illustrations. The editing and compression of this edition was undertaken by Domenico's son Henry under the auspices of his father, who had recently retired to Eton where he continued to give lessons at the college. "I have endeavoured to render it of more general use, by reducing it both in size and price" (Henry's preface). The original 1763 folio edition presented the text in French only; later editions provided a parallel text in English. This edition was the first with the text in English only. This copy includes an advertisement for Henry Angelo's school, with a slip mounted on the verso of the title page: "Mr. H. Angelo Teaches Fencing at the Great Room, over the entrance of the Opera House Hay Market, on Mondays, Wednesdays, & Fridays, from 12 till 3". Landscape octavo (135 x 230 mm). With 44 engraved plates (as called for, 3 have double numbering resulting in some listings stating 47 plates). Contemporary half calf, rebacked and recornered with original spine laid down, marbled sides and endpapers, edges speckled blue. Front pastedown with the contemporary bookplate of George Moore (perhaps the gentleman of that name recorded as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn who published a pamphlet on Anglo-Irish union in 1799) and the label of the bookseller James Toovey, noting a sale to the Earl of Mayo in 1883 for 30 shillings. Light rubbing to spine, slight crease to title page short closed tear foot of plate 3, scattered light foxing and offsetting from plates, contents otherwise clean. A very good copy. ESTC T143107. Richard Cohen, By the Sword, 2002.