Cycling/ Lesclide/ Régamey/ Adventure/ Prehistory/ Russia - Lot 89

Cycling/ Lesclide/ Régamey/ Adventure/ Prehistory/ Russia With this magnificent volume from 1870-1876, we have the cornerstone of the nascent velocipedie: "Le Tour du monde en vélocipède" by Le Grand Jacques, illustrations by Felix Regamey (1844-1902). Publisher's cover with its superb original gilded illustration (the velocipedist takes off on a luxury machine). It's with this magical book from 19 rue des Martyrs (just around the corner from here, and from the "Petit Journal" on rue La Fayette, of which the great Jacques, alias Richard Lesclide, was a contributor), and which could have been by Jules Verne (hello "Michel Strogoff", 1876), that we discover a new freedom, and the great outdoors, as we travel from Paris to Nijnie-Novgorod on a velocipede (via St Quentin, Erquelines, Liège, Hanover, Potsdam, Berlin, Kowno, Louga, Kazan, Perm, Yaloutorowsk) in the wheel of a giant cyclist named Victorine. Richard Lesclide (1825-1892), who signs here under the pseudonym Le Grand Jacques, is the providential man who carved out the road for "this intelligent iron horse". Inventing the cycling press, creating races, romanticizing this new world to make it plausible and edible, the man who had a thousand lives, including one close to Victor Hugo, is one of those phenomena who, like Eugène Chapus, Pierre Giffard, Paul Rousseau (see historical photo), Eugène Desbonnet, Georges de St Clair and Baron de Coubertin, invented a new world, that of sport. Sadly, it has gone astray, but here, what beauty and candor in these 268 pages, which are also a pedaling 1867 version of Blaise Cendrars' "La prose du Transibérien" (1913). 1870. 22 x 13.5 cm. GOOD CONDITION. Very rare. The original edition is from 1869-70, but we offer here the more polished 1876 edition, as shown on the cover.