AN EXCEPTIONALLY SCARCE SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE PUBLISHER Lucas (Charles J.P.) The Olympic Games 1904, St Louis, Mo., USA, bo
£15,000 - £20,000
AN EXCEPTIONALLY SCARCE SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE PUBLISHER Lucas (Charles J.P.) The Olympic Games 1904, St Louis, Mo., USA, bound in red suede stamped with the publisher's name Woodward in gilt, signed in ink to the front end paper TO MY DEAR FRIEND MR W B WOODWARD, FROM CHARLES J. LUCAS, MARCH 10, 1905, 57pp, 28-full-color photos of officials and events, and winners chart 12.5x 18cm, A detailed report on August 29 to September 3 Track and Field events, and list of winners in 1896 Athens Olympiad, gilt pictorial of a discus thrower to front cover, the front interior also pasted with one of the author's business cards, published by Woodward & Tiernan Publishing Co., 1905 The standard Lucas report for 1904, bound in green, is very rare itself with very few copies known beyond those held in libraries in St Louis. Harvey Abrams, who wrote his American Doctoral Dissertation in 1972 on the 1904 St Louis Olympic Games, spent his life researching these Games. He was also for many years a rare book dealer by profession. Abrams believed that no more than half a dozen of these luxury edition personalised copies would have been made for Lucas's nearest and dearest, but it may have been even less. This volume being offered here is one of only two copies known to the auctioneer, and the first ever to have been offered for sale by auction, and moreover the rarest Olympic Report ever to have come under the hammer.