Traité élémentaire du jeu des échecs exposé d'après une méthode nouvelle pour en faciliter l'étude précédé de mélanges historiques Anecdotiques et Litteraires

Author: Alfred Jacques Florimond [Comte de Basterot] (1800 - 1887)Year: 1852Publisher: Allouard et KaeppelinPlace: ParisDescription: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 co