Gymnastics for Youth: Or a practical Guide to healthful and amusing Exercises for the use of Schools. An Essay toward the necessary Improvement of Education, chiefly as it relates to the Body; freely translated from the German [.] Salzmann (C. G.) Sciences

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, engraved folding frontispiece and 9 plates, the odd smudge, pp. xvi, 433, [1], 8vo, contemporary half tan calf and marbled boards, flat spine gilt in compartments, marbled edges, a little scuffed with very minor discolouration to the spine where it has been expertly repaired; contemporary ownership inscription to title, very good. A handsome copy of this illustrated guide to gymnastics, 'a systematic and comprehensive manual of physical exercise' (Pfister, p. 164). Christian Gotthilf Salzmann was founder and master of the progressive academy at Schnepfenthal, assisted by his principal Johann Gutsmuths, under whose name the original edition of this work was published, as Gymnastik für die Jugend, in 1793. Considered a foundational treatise on modern gymnastics, it also includes athletics, weightlifting, dancing, walking, and swimming, as well as the more gymnastically conventional aerial, bar, and floor work. The translator and illustrator of this and the 1802 US edition (more common in commerce) are disputed, with a suggestion that the former is Mary Wollstonecraft - an enthusiastic supporter of Salzmann's ideas, and translator of his Elements of morality (1790) - and that the latter is William Blake. See: Gertrud Pfister, Gymnastics, a Transatlantic Movement, (2013). [McNab E248; Thomas Swimming, p. 219; Osborne, p. 853],