I am searching for old boxing books (pre 1950) explaining the basic boxing techniques and serving as manuals. I found out these ones: 'Scientific boxing' by James J. Corbett 'Scientific boxing and self defence' by Tommy Burns Could you recommend any other old boxing book focusing on the boxing techniques?
Edwin Haislet's Boxing is the most famous one I reckon. 1940, the images are gloveless, but it describes gloved version of the sport. Very interesting read, as it shows certain beliefs of the era, that are clearly torn apart now, such as dehydration increasing speed among other benefits, or long-term CTE being a result of blood clotting in the brain (which is not far removed from the actual happenstance -- the 'scarring' and tau proteins accumulation.)
Jack Dempsey's Championship Fighting was originally published in 1950 but has been reprinted at least a couple of times. I had a softbound copy which I think was the 1983 version. He explains his technique for explosive punching using a baby falling out of a window as an example. A neat book and interesting read.
The Haislet book is the best ever instructional book written on the subject. The knowledge in that book is insane and is very powerfully influenced by the St Paul style made famous by Mike Gibbons. If you do the research, many US universities and colleges had boxing teams and many of them had books that were published. They were instructional manuals and some of them were pretty good. You might be surprised at how common the shoulder roll defense was. Years ago, when I collected such books, you could find them by digging around in old book stores. I would imagine that they would be available today online from the universities that originally produced them.
The oldest case of the shoulder roll I found was in the 1790s I believe and it was a book by Mendoza.
