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HALL, Captain James Norman, Lieut. Charles Bernard Nordhoff - The Lafayette Flying Corps

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Historical Memorabilia Start Price:5,000.00 USD Estimated At:8,000.00 - 10,000.00 USD
HALL, Captain James Norman, Lieut. Charles Bernard Nordhoff - The Lafayette Flying Corps
Items are as is. Please call us at (323) 250-3980 or email us at blacksparrow@haxbee.com for condition reports or any general inquiry.
HALL, Captain James Norman, Lieut. Charles Bernard Nordhoff. The Lafayette Flying Corps. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920. Two volumes. First Edition.

Quarto (10 ½ X 7 3/8 in., 267 X 187 mm). [xxix], 514 pages + [x], 361 pages. Color lithograph frontispieces in both volumes, well illustrated with nearly 400 photographs throughout. Dark blue cloth, spines and boards lettered in gilt. Both volumes are Near Fine, with slight rubbing of the extremities and the corner tips. Top edges gilt. Hinges are sound. Include the scarce original dust jackets, which exhibit slight smudging and soiling of the spine panels, and paper tape reinforcement of the folds on the verso. Housed in the original cardboard slipcase. Slipcase is worn.

Presentation copy, signed by James N. Hall and Charles Bernard Nordhoff on a card tipped to the front free endpaper of Volume I, “For Doctor Gros, with warm regards, James N. Hall, Chas. Nordhoff, Tahiti, Oct. 14, 1927.”

Additionally signed by five surviving members of the Corps who signed on their respective biographical pages: Henry Batchelor (page 113), Edward Hinkle (page 267), Charles Kinsolving (page 301), William Wellman (movie director, page 483), and Herman Whitmore (page 487).

Dr. Gros was an American doctor in Paris who was instrumental in organizing the Lafayette Escadrille, and is pictured on page 70 of Volume I. Young men from neutral America during World War I were recruited to come to France and fly in the Escadrille in combat against the Germans. When America entered the war, the Lafayette Escadrille became the Lafayette Flying Corps.

The cornerstone of any serious aviation collection. It is rare to find books in such fine condition, and especially desirable with the signatures of Hall, Nordhoff, and Flying Corps members.