For the Further Improvement of Dancing, a Treatise of Chorography, or the Art of Dancing Country Dances after a new character, wherein the Figures, Steps, & Manner of Performing are described, & the Rules demonstrated in an Easie Method adapted to the meanest Capacity. Translated from the French of Mons. Feuillet, and now this improved second edition is added a Collection of Country Dances, composed & written in the same Character by John Essex, Dancing Master (Essex/Feuillet, London 1710)

Dance manual/reference by John Essex (English dancing-master, d. 1744) / translated from Raoul-Auger Feuillet's Recueil de Contredanses mises en Choregraphie (Paris 1706). London, 1710. Printed for Walsh & Randall, Musical-Instrument-Makers in Ordinary to Her Majesty, at the Harp and Hautboy in Catherine-street near Somerset-House in the Strand. Source: DATA/LIBRARY_OF_DANCE/ABBYY TXT/1710-Feuillet-Further_Improvement_(LOC).txt (Library of Congress scan, 7.0 KB OCR). HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE: This is the FIRST English-press edition of John Essex's translation of Feuillet's country-dance Recueil, predating the better-known LOC-1715-ESSEX second edition by five years. Together with John Weaver's 1706 Orchesography (LOC-1706-WEAVER-ISAAC translation of Feuillet's Choregraphie itself), the 1710 Essex Further Improvement is one of the two earliest English-language Beauchamp-Feuillet treatises -- making 1710 the year that Beauchamp-Feuillet character notation becomes AVAILABLE to the English dancing-master profession in their own language for BOTH the ballroom single-couple dance notation (Weaver 1706) AND the country-dance figure notation (Essex 1710). Bundled with Essex's own collection of English country dances written in Feuillet characters, which are explicitly named in the 1715 edition's prose commentary as including 'the Diligent' (a two-part country dance, H-BAR-CD-F0044), 'the handsome Minuet' (a three-part country dance, H-BAR-CD-F0045), 'the Princess's Passepied' (a French-court-derived inclusion, umbrella Rosetta to H-BAR-PAS-F0001 Passepied). The 1710 OCR clearly shows 'The Tailor' (or 'The Taxier' / 'The Tatler' -- OCR-ambiguous) as a recurrent dance-head in the back-matter, and the English Country-Dance theoretical introduction (Stamps, Rigadoon Steps, Balances, Right-Hand-and-Left progression, repeat-rules for longways country-dance) occupies the first half of the volume. Rosetta-stone value: pre-dates the LOC-1715-ESSEX attestations of Diligent / Handsome-Minuet / Princess's-Passepied by 5 years and pushes the English-press attestation of the Feuillet-character country-dance notation system to 1710 -- simultaneously with the French Feuillet-Contredanses 1706 and only 4 years after Weaver's Orchesography. Has_Step_Detail = No: the figure-body engravings are Beauchamp-Feuillet character plates that did not OCR, and title-cards are severely corrupted by OCR noise (plate-overlap); appearances at this pass are seeded from the Essex 1715 named-dance list and confirmed by OCR-recoverable title-heads in the 1710 footers. Essex-editions-chain now: 1710 (LOC-1710-ESSEX first ed., this entry) -> 1715 (LOC-1715-ESSEX second ed.) -> 1728 (LOC-1728-RAMEAU-ESSEX, Essex's translation of Rameau's Maitre) -- 18-year Essex-as-Feuillet/Rameau-translator lineage. (1710). Imported from local collection.