Rapier and Smallsword:1460-1820 by A.V.B. Norman is arguably the single most important reference work on complex hilted European swords. It has also been out of print for many years and the few used copies available routinely sell for hundreds of dollars, while the two available new copies on Amazon right now are over a thousand dollars (check out the listing here). Lucky for you we have just received several dozen uncirculated copies of the 2008 American edition. These are hard cover books with gold lettering on the spine featuring some full color images and good photos on the hilt pictures. Sadly, these are missing the dust jacket, but in every other way they seem to be the equal of the first edition.
This is the book to begin a serious study of the development and structure of rapiers and smallswords. It is extensively foot noted, has many attributions, an excellent bibliography and several appendices with a total of 464 pages of the highest quality research on the most elegant of European swords.
We have a very limited number of these and once they are gone we are unaware of any further supply of this volume anywhere. We will be putting these up for sale individually as part of our Black Friday sale at the special price of $125. The sale will begin at 7AM central time on Friday 11/26/21 with copies available for purchase on our website. This is an incredible deal on one of the most sought after reference works on swords. After the holiday sale the price of the remaining books will go up rather a lot, so act fast! You should also check out the other books we have for sale, and for which we are the exclusive American distributers, Ewart Oakeshott's Sword in Hand: A Brief History of the Knightly Sword and the recent Arms and Armour: History, Conservation, Analysis commemorating the career of our good friend and retired curator of the Wallace Collection, David Edge.
Nathan Clough, Ph.D. is Vice President of Arms and Armor and a member of the governing board of The Oakeshott Institute. He is a historical martial artist and a former university professor of cultural geography. He has given presentations on historical arms at events including Longpoint and Combatcon, and presented scholarly papers at, among others, The International Congress on Medieval Studies.
Craig Johnson is the Production Manager of Arms and Armor and Secretary of The Oakeshott Institute. He has taught and published on the history of arms, armor and western martial arts for over 30 years. He has lectured at several schools and Universities, WMAW, HEMAC, 4W, and ICMS at Kalamazoo. His experiences include iron smelting, jousting, theatrical combat instruction and choreography, historical research, European martial arts and crafting weapons and armor since 1985.