The School of Fencing: with A General Explanation of the Principal Attitudes and Positions Peculiar to the Art

Good copy of the first English octavo edition with plates by Thomas Rowlandson of this classic fencing manual.

Complete with 47 engraved plates of classic fencing positions on 44 sheets.

The original 1787 edition, the first to include plates redrawn and engraved by Thomas Rowlandson. All plates dated 1783.

The first octavo edition of Domenico Angelo's renowned guide to swordsmanship, first published in folio with illustrations by James Gwin in 1763.

Edited by Domenico's son and fencing master Henry Charles William Angelo who "endeavoured to render it of more general use, by reducing it both in size and price." The original plates and text were featured in the Escrime (Fencing) section of Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie and praised with "Had we known of any work more perfect in its kind, we should have made use of it."

Angelo's school in Carlisle House, Soho, London was popular with English royalty and celebrities including Lord Byron, artists Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough and George Stubbs, actor David Garrick, adventurer Casanova and cross-dressing spy Chevalier d'Eon. After Domenico's retirement to Eton in 1780, Henry took over the Fencing Academy and moved it to the Opera House, Haymarket. When the theatre burnt down in 1789, Henry moved the school into 13 Bond Street and shared the premises with boxer John Jackson.

The positions were posed by Domenico Angelo himself and provide the only portraits of the fencing master.

Recently rebound in brown morocco leather with gilt title on spine, marble boards, grey endpapers, the text and plates complete, a few plates with some offsetting and finger smudges but overall very good.