Adventures in skating historiography
Ryan Stevens, who writes the Skate Guard blog, has taken on the gargantuan task of making sense of all the books on figure skating published in the last century and a quarter by continuing F. W. Foster’s 1898 Bibliography of Skating. It's a job worth doing and Stevens is to be commended for taking it… Continue reading Stevens’ Bibliography of Figure Skating
I have completed my translation of the first German book on skating, Gerhard Ulrich Anton Vieth's Ueber das Schrittschuhlaufen. It was originally a lecture given in Dessau in 1788, then published as a journal article in 1789, and finally published in book form with some additions by an anonymous editor in 1790. Vieth's book is… Continue reading Vieth, On Skating
The cover of the Home Farm Books reprint. Note the misused comma! Young men planning to spend the winter at an Alpine resort (which lots of rich English people did back in the day) and get involved in winter sports while there are the intended audience of this book, which was published in 1927. The… Continue reading Lunn’s Letters to Young Winter Sportsmen
The cover of my edition of Frostiana. Frostiana is a book about various ice activities that was allegedly (but probably not literally) published on the ice during the last London Frost Fair in 1814. I put together an edition of it a few years ago. The whole book is a collection of previous works, generally… Continue reading Frostiana’s chapter on skating
McFarland, my publisher, is offering 40% off when you shop with code HOLIDAY22 through November 28. That means you can get my bone skates book for $27 instead of the usual $45. After that, the code will get you 25% off for the rest of the holiday season. The code is good storewide. They have… Continue reading Skates Made of Bone is on sale
James Hines, author of the great big skating history book, has come out with another book. This one is billed as focusing on figures and has been made much of by US Figure Skating: Sarah Brannen reviewed it on the USFSA site and the August 2022 issue of Skating mentioned it. It's a self-published limited… Continue reading End of the Compulsories
A caricature of Jones? Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Today marks the 250th anniversary of Robert Jones's conviction. On this blog, Jones is best known for his Treatise on Skating—the oldest known book about ice skating—and his skates, which I tried to reproduce. Jones is also known for child molestation. Today day in 1772, he was… Continue reading 250 years of Robert Jones
Today's book report is on Schaatsen en schaatsenmakers in de 19e en 20e eeuw [Skates and skatemakers in the 19th and 20th centuries] by A. C. Broere. I have the 1988 edition (dark blue cover); there's also a version with a white cover. I don't know what the difference is. It's only 80 pages long… Continue reading Skates and skatemakers in the 19th and 20th centuries
Zwerven op de schaats door Holland This post continues the backlog of skating books books I have to write about. This one is in Dutch, and the title means "roaming on skates through Holland." It's a small book—only 96 pages and about 5"x7"—published by Van Gorgum in 1942. The book includes short chapters on the… Continue reading Zwerven op de schaats door Holland
This book was published in 1966 by the US Figure Skating Association, but exists outside of the Rulebook and test structure. It, according to the foreward [sic], exists to help further interest, proficiency and enjoyment to the skaters who like this phase of our sport.Ice Dances, p. 3 The book can be divided into three… Continue reading Ice Dances, Figures and Exercises