Rare. A complete set of 22 cards featuring mid-century British motorcycles, in the original album. To give this publication its full title - 'An Album to contain a series of cards illustrating MODERN BRITISH MOTOR-CYCLES and Riding Hints'. Beneath each card glued into the album is a paragraph describing the motorbike pictured, and a Riding Hint. Machines featured are the Ariel Four Port Square Four, Ariel Hunter Twin, Velocette LE, Velocette Mac, Corgi Mark IV, James Comet, James Commodore, Francis-Barnett Falcon 58, Francis-Barnett Merlin 57, Triumph Speed Twin, Triumph Thunderbird, Royal Enfield 500 Twin, BSA Golden Flash, BSA Bantam, Sunbeam Model 57, AJS Model 18S, AJS Model 7R, Matchless Model G3/LS, Matchless Model G9, Norton ES2 and Norton Dominator. Riding Hints cover subjects including Blind spots, Skidding and Road Fellowship. "The highway is not the place for competitive chasing and racing," says the last line of the book, as you might expect from a publication by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). No date of publication is given, but it's probably around 1953, to judge by the bikes included (such as the Falcon 58). The cards are in all pretty good condition, having been inside this album for nearly 70 years, but there are a couple of small triangular patches missing from cards 19 and 22, which are opposite, where it looks like a bit of glue has got stuck to each and they've had to be pulled apart. There's no markings to the text and very little spotting and staining, internally. The cover shows some signs of shelfwear and handling, for example there's very minor bumping to the front outer corner edges and a crease down along out to the top back outer corner. And it's obviously a volume that's been picked up a fair few times, if only to glue in all the cards and then to admire them. All in all, it is a very pleasing volume.

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Bibliographic Details

Title: Modern British Motor-Cycles and Riding Hints
Publisher: Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents in collaboration with the British Motorcycle industry
Publication Date: 1953
Binding: Soft cover
Edition: 1st Edition
Condition: Good

Store Description

Books, periodicals and printed ephemera: interesting, competitively-priced and accurately described. Previously on Abebooks as an offshoot of the small independent publisher Agre Books, named after "the thicket-searcher Agre" in George Chapman's Hymnus in Cynthiam (1594), in which a pack of hounds fall "to howling in their happinesse: / As when a flocke of school-boyes... gets leave to sport, / And then like toyle-freed deare, in headlong sort / With shouts, and shrieks, they hurrey from the schoole..." But as no one was ever sure how to spell or pronounce Agre, with some regret that hound's name has been retired. However - while stocks last - you can expect a few copies of old Agre titles to be among the many things listed here, with some Chapman too. (Chapman had the necessary humorous spirit for an Abebooks seller: "I rest as resolute as Seneca, satisfying my selfe if but a few, if one, or if none like it".)

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Hudston Books
United Kingdom

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