Before I get to the housekeeping, here is a rare little whist booklet that came my way.
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| The Laws of Whist, for the Pocket-Book Levy [2230] |
My use of the word "little" is deliberate as the book is 3 x 1 7/8 inches and twenty-four pages only. The introduction promises:
This little Manual, intended for reference at the Whist-table, being, from its diminutive size, portable in the smallest pocket-book, will be found useful in deciding doubtful points, and settling disputes on the spot.
The book purports to be by Jonathan Long, Esq., but that is almost certainly a play on "Bob Short", the psedonym used by Robert Withy, as discussed in a three-part series of essays (one, two, and three). The book is rare with institutional copies only at the Bodleian and British Libraries. A very pleasing acquisition!
Now the housekeeping. This blog was written as I was compiling my online Hoyle bibliography and it served as a way to record first thoughts about what is now a book in progress. A few things have become stale over time.
First, in the course of the past fourteen (!) years of writing about Hoyle, I have learned a lot along the way. I have changed a lot of the labels I use to identify books in my bibliography. I have learned about new editions of Hoyle that I would have included in the relevant essay had I know of them at the time of writing. I have found answers to many questions I asked in the blog. I have made some, but not all of the updates I might have.
Next, the blog frequently links to the online version of ESTC, the English Short Title Catalogue. The British Library hosted ESTC until they were victims of a cyber attack in October 2023 and the links stopped working. Within the past couple of weeks, ESTC has be moved to CERL, the Consortium of European Research Libraries. I have updated the ESTC links to point to the CERL site, although I'm sure I missed some.
I also replaced the ESTC links to Hoyle books to point instead to my own bibliography. So links to the first edition of Hoyle's first book now point here rather than here. If you want to get to an ESTC page for Hoyle, you can go to my bibliography, then click on the ESTC link in the "references" section.
Lastly, and this will only matter to me, I've added my internal ID for books in my collection. So the Laws of Whist, pictured above, refers to Levy [2239]. From that number, I can go to my catalogue and find purchase details, shelving information, etc.
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