COLLARD, John M. The Snow Queen's Magic Gown. The pioneer skiers 1860-1914. Switzerland - Great Britain - Europe. London, privately printed, 2015.
Tall 4to. Original blue flexible cloth, spine and front cover lettered in silver; pp. 252.
First edition, privately printed, the soft-cover issue. A very good ski-historical study of the early years of the winter sport, magisterially researched by John Collard, ski historian and author of the first monograph of the skiing pioneer Arnold Lunn, published one year before this highly legible reference work, equipped with useful appendices, containing a reference list of skiing literature of the period, a chronology, an annotated list of resorts, ski poetry, a bibliography covering periodicals and other bibliographies, as well as an index. The work contains substantial translations (from German and French) of the expedition accounts of Swiss and German pioneers. This is their first appearance in English.- The first edition of this book of 2007 is virtually unobtainable now, which made this second, and revised, edition necessary.
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