2024: The Year in Collecting

I found some spectacular books this year: two Hoyles and a third book that is not obviously a Hoyle, but certainly belongs in my Hoyle collection. I'll also show some French and Dutch gaming literature, notable for its rarity. 

The best book of the year is a bit of a Frankenstein. It is a fifth edition of Hoyle's whist treatise printed for Francis Cogan (1744) but with a cancel title suggesting it is a "tenth" edition of Hoyle (1750). After the 76-page whist treatise are four pages, one unnumbered, the others numbered 78-80 containing the text of Hoyle's Artificial Memory for Whist. These four pages have never, never been recorded. After that is a second edition of Hoyle's Quadrille, printed in 1746. How did this book come to be the way it is? 

Thomas Osborne Jr. purchased the Hoyle copyright from Francis Cogan in later 1745. As I have discussed a number of times (here and here, for example), Osborne also acquired unsold copies of Piquet and Quadrille from Cogan and issued them with cancel title pages. My new acquisition shows that Osborne also acquired at least one unsold copy of Whist. He used the cancel section title for whist from the "tenth" edition of Mr. Hoyle's Games, which I have pictured here (about halfway down). His goal was to make an old text from 1744 appear fresh.

There was a catch. Osborne's sixth (1746) and seventh (1747) editions of Whist included Hoyle's Artificial Memory (I discuss Memory here and its incorporation into the whist treatise here). How could he sell the incomplete version of whist in 1750? Osborne had four new pages printed up containing the artificial memory: 

Artificial Memory for Whist

Notice how small the type is for Memory, so it can be squeezed into four pages. 

Before this book, I had never managed to find a copy of the fifth edition of Whist (described as Whist.5), so that was exciting. The late printing of Artificial Memory (described as Memory.2.*) was unknown, so that was even more so. The second edition of Quadrille, not so exciting, as I already had a number of copies.

You won't be surprised to learn that the dealer who sold me the book was not aware of all the bibliographical minutia. It was described as a tenth edition of Whist bound with a second of Quadrille. The dealer included a photograph similar to the one below to show the Quadrille title page. 

Memory page 80 and Quadrille title page

I knew that page 80 was something I had never seen before and bought the book not knowing exactly what it was. When I found the fifth edition of Cogan's Whist with an unknown printing of Memory, I was overjoyed with the purchase.

From 1775 to 1826, the best-selling Hoyle was Hoyle's Games Improved edited by Charles Jones, appearing in eleven editions. I bought a copy of the 1808 edition in 1997.

Jones, Hoyle's Games Improved (1808)

In addition to selling the complete book, the publishers arranged for four excerpts to be published separately, but with the same setting of type. I already had A Companion to the Card Table which was the first 168 pages of the 428 page book. It treated the games of whist through domino (which would not today be considered a card game). I also had a copy of a second extract, the material on chess. From newspaper advertisements, I was aware of an extract on backgammon, but no copies were known. I had seen a copy of a final extract on draughts (checkers) when I visited Cleveland Public Library. Somehow, copies of Backgammon and Draughts appeared on eBay and I was the high bidder.

Backgammon, excerpted from Jones (1808)

 

Draughts, excerpted from Jones (1808)

The draughts treatise was written by William Payne and Hoyle had nothing to do with it. Since it is an extract from Hoyle's Games Improved with the same setting of type, it definitely belongs in my Hoyle collection and Hoyle bibliography. It is pleasing for this completist Hoyle collector to have the full volume and all four extracts.

I seem to have gone a bit piquet happy this year. Piquet is one of the best cards game for two but this pamphlet pictured below describes piquet à écrire, a way to allow more than two to play. It was published by Jusseraud who was active in Paris in the first decade of the 19th century. The pamphlet is eight pages and had never been bound--there are two nested folded sheets, never trimmed. No other copies are known.

Piquet à Écrire (1810c)

The woodblock print is both charming and ironic. Why are the only two players when the pamphlet is about playing piquet with three or more?

My wife and I visited Bruges this year. What a charming city! Some people study guide books before traveling. Instead I bought a couple of books in Dutch on the game of piquet printed in Bruges. There are no recorded copies of the first in any library. The only copy of the second is at the Biekorf Main Library in Bruges. A couple of lovely rarities!

1765 Bruges imprint

1860 Bruges imprint

Last year, I bought a manuscript of a rare 1749 trictrac book, pictured here. This year, I found a second manuscript of the same book. The manuscript adds a tenth chapter “Renseignemens Supplémentaires,” an index of terms used in the text. 

Trictrac manuscript

There are a couple of interesting items coming to auction before year-end, so a part two may become necessary!