2025: The Year in Collecting

I added some wonderful books to my collection in 2025. You saw two of them in the essay "2025: The Year of McTear". Of the others, many came from the final Ricky Jay sale. Jay (1946-2018) was the preeminent stage magician of his generation and a collector of magic, broadly interpreted. I dreaded running into him at book fairs as there was a small, but significant overlap in our interests. My niche is instructional books about games. His passion for magic included the sorts of stage techniques that are also used to cheat at cards or dice. A book on card games with warnings on how to detect frauds in play would be of interest to both of us. If truth be told, a manual on the detection of cheating equally serves to instruct the cheater. 

The first sale of Ricky Jay items was at Sotheby's  in 2021, followed by three at Potter and Potter in 2023-4. The items I bought were from the final sale at Forum Auction. The first two items had an indirect connection to Hoyle. 

In the late eighteenth century, the market leading Hoyle was Hoyle's Games Improved edited by Charles Jones. One of the challengers was the New Hoyle from the manuscript of the late Charles Pigott and published by James Ridgway and H. D. Symonds. Each new edition of HGI or the New Hoyle would introduce new games, trying to outdo the other. Pigott.1.1 (February 1796) introduced cribbage, faro, matrimony, and rouge et noir. Jones.5 (March 1796) included those four games and added cassino and connexions. Pigott.1.3 (April 1796) included the two new games and added all fours and put. Jones.6 (May 1800) caught up and added another five games and the escalation was over. 

Williams, Cribbage
Levy [2222] 

 

It was not Pigott who udpated the New Hoyle--he died in 1794. Instead, Ridgway and Symonds incorporated text from other books they published. In 1791 Ridgway published A Treatise on the Game of Cribbage by John Williams, who wrote under the pseudonym Anthony Pasquin. Jay was undoubtedly attracted to this book because it had a brief section on how to cheat at cribbage by manipulating cards. 

 

 

Faro (1793)
Levy[2224]

 

Faro and rouge et noir came from a book published in 1793 by John Debrett, an associate of Ridgway and Symonds. I was pleased to find copies of the two books that contributed to the Hoyle story, even if indirectly. 

 

 

There is a story that goes with another item I got from the Ricky Jay sale. Years ago, I purchased a copy of the first edition of the Annals of Gaming (1775) in 2017, pictured here. The book reprints gaming essays from the periodical Covent Garden Magazine, discussed here. Many of the essays blatantly plagiarize Hoyle. There is a "second" edition (actually a reissue of the first edition with a reset title page) and in 2024 a dealer's catalogue offered a previously unrecorded "third" edition. I ordered the item as soon as I received the catalogue, but the item had been sold. It turns out that Ricky Jay had another copy, and that one I was able to purchase. It too is a reissue of the first edition with a reset title.  How odd that the book was unrecorded for 250 years, and two copies turn up in the trade just two years apart. 

Annals of Gaming
Levy [2220]

Hughes.Games.1824
Levy [2231]

 

 

I would call the three books from the Jay sale "Hoyle adjacent" but there are some new Hoyles as well. This appears to be the only surviving copy of a cheap edition of Hoyle published by Thomas Hughes, reissued in 1825 and 1828. I particularly like the book because it has the original paper wrapper and a hand-colored frontispiece, pictured below. 

  

 

Wrapper and colored frontispiece
from Hughes.Games.1824

 

There were other Ricky Jay books--the sale had a lot of mixed lots so buying one book often meant buying a half dozen. Perhaps I'll write about some of the others, but for now I'd like to highlight something that came from another source. My obsession with piquet and with manuscripts continued with the item below. 

Manuscript in Italian
on the game of piquet 1800c
Levy [2217]

The handwriting is a bit awkward, but it is legible and bears no relationship to any printed work on piquet that I'm familiar with. It is 20 leaves and the gatherings have never been sewn or bound. 

The year 2026 is off to a slow start, but who knows what will turn up?  

 

2017: The Year in Collecting

2017 was another quiet year in collecting. The highlights are two London Hoyles, two translations, and a couple of books that competed with Hoyle.

First, an anecdote, and a book that is more of a curiosity than a highlight. There's an old chestnut in the rare book world: A customer calls up an English book dealer, saying "I have a book by Churchill's chauffeur. Is it worth anything?" The dealer, perhaps with eyes rolling asks, "By any chance is it autographed by the chauffeur?" The customer, excitedly, "Why yes! Yes it is!" "So sorry," replies the dealer. "Autographed copies are a glut on the market. It's the unsigned ones that are rare."

With that in mind, I acquired a "twelfth" edition of Hoyle's Games, described here. I've written about the authorized "twelfth" and its piracies, noting many differences. The most salient is that the authorized editions are signed by Hoyle and by the lead publisher Thomas Osborne; the piracies are not. Well, here is a twist--a book that is authorized, signed by Osborne, but not signed by Hoyle. The condition is terrible, but the price was commensurate, so I'm amused to have this copy and will always associate it with Churchill's (presumably fictitious) chauffeur. 

typical copy
signed by Hoyle and Osborne
Levy [1118]

oddball copy
signed by Osborne only
Levy [1825]

Back to the more serious purchases. The best single item is a substantial condition upgrade, a copy of Whist.3 (1743) in the original Dutch paper wrappers. Francis Cogan advertised his books as "done up in fine gold embossed paper" and this is what he meant. I am reliably informed that such papers were actually made in Germany and the common term "Dutch" is a corruption of "Deutsch." I like nothing better than a book in its original binding.

Whist.3 wrapper

Whist.3 Hoyle autograph and title page
Levy [1821].

 This was the second book to be autographed by Hoyle.

Epitome of Hoyle
Levy [1823]

The other Hoyle is an abridgement from the early 1780s, one I write about in the essay "An Epitome of Hoyle, a Discovery, and two Coincidences."  I'd never seen a copy for sale before and it was a treat to add this to the collection. 

1821 Italian translation
Levy [1819]

As my collection of London Hoyles grows more advanced, the biggest opportunity for me is continental translations. In 2012, I had written that I was not aware of any Italian translation of Hoyle's Whist. I have since identified an 1821 Milan edition that came bound with an almanac. I found a copy for sale and was surprised to see that it was in an original binding and did not include the almanac. The two books have different title pages, but otherwise the same setting of type. Hence they are two bibliographical issues; mine seems to be the only extant copy without the almanac.

1773 Liege imprint
Levy [1826]

As I noted in another 2012 essay, Hoyle was translated into French more often than any other language. Sometimes, Whist was published as a stand-alone text. Other times it was included in the various editions of the Académie des Jeux. The translation at left was published in Belgium in 1773. All three copies I have seen, mine included, are bound with a 1774 copy of Greco's Le Jeu des Échecs translated from Italian. The book was reissued with a cancel title in 1781 with the imprint "Paris : Les libraires associés."

Most of the card games from the Académie des Jeux were translated into English as the Academy of Play. The translation did not include Hoyle, avoiding potential copyright problems in London. In fact, the Academy of Play competed with Hoyle and was published both in London and Dublin in 1768. The Académies presented only rules for games and not strategy, as noted in the footnote at right below.

Academy of Play
Dublin (1768)
Levy [1820]

Academy of Play footnote

 

The note identifies the need for a manual on the game of Quadrille, dismissing Hoyle as "nothing more than instructions for the better playing of those, who have already learned the Game; for it is impossible for any one to form any idea of the game by what is there laid down." Yes, strategy is what Hoyle was about, and the footnote has an ironic sound to me. 

That brings us to The Annals of Gaming (1775). I was outbid on a copy in a 2004, but bid more aggressively this time--the book is quite rare in the trade. As I have written, Annals competed with Hoyle, but was focused more on cheating than on strategy. The essays originally appeared in the Covent Garden Magazine, a monthly periodical containing tame, but erotic engravings and essays, and a monthly article on gaming.

Levy [1822]

There were a handful of lesser acquisitions and an interesting book on the way, but that will have to wait for another time. 

Happy New Year, everyone. Let's see what 2018 brings!

More on The Covent Garden Magazine

Last essay, I discussed my recent visit to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. My travels continued to the main campus at UCLA where I visited Special Collections at the Young Research Library. There were a half dozen copies of Hoyle I wished to examine, but the real draw for me was copies of The Covent Garden Magazine, which I had written about previously.

The magazine, published by George Allen from July 1772, contains a mixture of erotica and essays on gaming. Some of the gaming essays are collected into The Annals of Gaming, printed for G. Allen, 1775 and reissued with a cancel title page as a "second" edition by William Lane, T. Axtell, J Wenman and J. Williams, G. Corrall, , S. Hayes, J Lewis, and T. Lewis.

The UCLA catalogue lists seventeen monthly issues of The Covent Garden Magazine and according to the reading room rules, I could examine two issues at a time, but not take photographs. The issues turned out to be in near pristine condition--original blue printed wrappers with a table of contents on the front cover and a note to the public on the back. Each issue was 48 pages with two copperplate engravings, one article on a game, and the rest rather tame erotica.

My interest in seeing the magazine was to learn (1) what games were covered, (2) how much of the gaming material was reprinted in The Annals of Gaming, and (3) how much of the text was lifted from Hoyle. The first issues I saw were one, five, six, and nine.

Issue one contained a general introduction to the plan of introducing gaming literature without discussing any game in particular. Five contained lansquenet, a game not covered by Hoyle. Six and nine contained piquet and quadrille, two of Hoyle's games.

Comparing the treatment of piquet in issue six of December 1772 (pp220-4) with Hoyle's book on the game is fascinating. The article adds a two-paragraph description of the game. Next are two chapters copied verbatim from Hoyle: chapter I "General Rules for Playing at Piquet" and chapter VII "Laws of the Game at Piquet." Absent are Hoyle's meatier chapters on strategy, probability, and examples of good play. The article continues with a page on methods of cheating at piquet. Whether they are to instruct the cheater or to enable the honest player to detect cheating is open to debate.

Issue six, being at the end of the year, contained an index of the first six issues, in which I learned that issues two through four covered whist, hazard, and tennis.

Issue nine of March 1773, had the first of two articles on quadrille (pp86-92), which does not appear to be copied from Hoyle's 1744 work.

I next saw issue fourteen, with an article on "labelle, the flux, and thirty one," a game I had never heard of. I turned to Google to learn something about it and quickly found something that surprised me greatly--Google books had digitized the entire run of The Covent Garden Magazine! I can't believe I never ran across it before, and can only assume that the digitization was a fairly recent effort by Google.

With the full text of CGM available, I am able to expand on my earlier essay which was based solely on advertisements for the magazine. It turns out that the magazine continued publication until December 1775 and the full text of volumes  one, two, three, and four are freely available online. And, I am able to answer the questions I set out above.

What games were covered in the magazine? In the 42 issues, 37 games were covered. Of these, only the first dozen were reprinted word-for-word in the Annals of Gaming. The chart below shows the games, the issue, pages, and date where the game was discussed in The Covent Garden Magazine, and the pages where the same text was reprinted in the Annals of Gaming:

game	issue:pages	date	Annals
whist	2:61-68	1772-08	3-29
hazard	3:81-88	1772-09	30-45
tennis	4:122-6	1772-10	46-58
lansquenet	5:174-5	1772-11	59-65
piquet	6:220-224	1772-12	66-86
billiards	7:1-8	1773-01	87-113*
loo	8:58-70	1773-02	114-122
quadrille	9:86-92	1773-03	122-44
quadrille (continued)	10:133-140	1773-04	145-172
lottery	11:181-3	1773-05	173-80
backgammon	12:212-5	1773-06	181-193**
all-fours	13:241-3	1773-07	199-205
comet or pope joan	14:281-4	1773-08	206-16

*The Covent Garden Magazine issued annual volumes at the end of every year. There was a supplement to the second volume containing additional material on billiards that was included in the Annals of Gaming.

**Annals copied a few pages of Hoyle's Backgammon that did not first appear in CGM.

How much was copied from Hoyle? The article on whist plagiarized chapters one and three (and some other tables) from  Hoyle's treatise with some added material much like piquet, discussed above. The article on backgammon copies most of chapters two through five of Hoyle's treatise, plus the five laws of backgammon from the end of the book. So, at least for the games Hoyle covered, CGM and Annals copy substantially from Hoyle.

What I find most striking from this exercise is that the magazine copied Hoyle before Hoyle went off copyright.  See "Hoyle in the Public Domain (1775)." In that essay I discussed the flurry of Hoyle reprints that were published in 1775, including the Annals of Gaming. Now that I have had a chance to see CGM, it is clear that publisher Allen copied Hoyle before Donaldson v Beckett eliminated perpetual copyright. I suppose this is not surprising--Allen served time in jail for publishing an "indecent print" in The Covent Garden Magazine. A little copyright violation just added spice to the stew (or perhaps stew to the spice).

In any case, it is ironic that my visit to UCLA to see scattered issues of The Covent Garden Magazine should result in my finding the full run online.

The Nature of Gaming Literature (part 2)

Part 1, found here, discusses (1) existential writing, (2) rules, and (3) remedies. I continue in this essay with (4) strategy, its subset for partnership games, (4a) partnership agreements, and (5) cheating. My goal in discussing this scheme is to discuss in what ways Hoyle's writing was new and to give some context for discussing other important books about gaming such as Cotton and Seymour.

Strategy

While game rules are sufficient for legal play, they are not sufficient for good play. The long title Hoyle's Whist treatise promise "some rules, whereby a beginner may, with due attention to them, attain to the playing it well." In my vocabulary, these are not rules, but strategy. Consider the first of Hoyle's "general rules to be observed by beginners":

When you lead, begin with the best suit in your hand; if you have a sequence of king, queen and knave, or queen, knave and ten, they are sure leads...(page 11)

While you are allowed to play any of the thirteen cards in your hand, Hoyle offers advice about which is the most likely to be successful.

Cotton offers no strategic advice in The Compleat Gamester; nor does Seymour in The Court Gamester despite his thorough description of rules. This, I believe, is Hoyle's major breakthrough--I know of no earlier strategic writing about cards games (although examples exist for chess and trictrac).

Partnership Agreement

Partnership games such as whist or bridge pose an additional strategic complexity--good play requires partners to make agreements (and disclose them to the opponents) so the partners can communicate about their hands (based on the card played and not by other means; see cheating, below). Hoyle's first rule continues, "...begin with the highest of the sequence, unless ..." So Hoyle is suggesting leading the K from KQJx. The trick-taking power of each of the honors is the same, but Hoyle is implicitly saying that the lead of the K denies the A and promises the Q. This is a matter of partnership agreement and partners may choose different agreements (as some do in bridge when they play Rusinow leads).

In retrospect, Hoyle did a big disservice to gaming literature by failing to distinguish between strategy and partnership agreement. He really didn't have a chance of getting it right--it took almost 150 years to get the two concepts disentangled. Unfortunately, the failure to distinguish between strategy and partnership agreement persists in beginning bridge books to this day. Even worse some beginning books fail to distinguish among rules, strategy, and partnership agreements; some beginners think they are breaking the rules of bridge if they open with less than 13 points!

Cheating

I said that remedies applied only to inadvertent irregularities. Intentional breaches of rules are cheating and are not covered by the laws. As Cavendish put it "There is a popular belief that card-laws are intended to prevent cheating. This belief, however, is altogether erroneous. the penalty for cheating is exclusion from society." (Clay's Decisions, and Card-Table Talk, p117)

Hoyle never discussed cheating or the means of detecting in, a theme that was common in Cotton's The Compleat Gamester and The Annals of Gaming.

Conclusion

There are certainly other categories I have not considered here. A common theme of early literature about games is the morality of gaming, surely another topic. One of the things I like about the Hargrave bibliography which I criticized here, is it classification of the literature (though she frequently put books in the wrong category).

I wrote this essay to highlight the role of Hoyle and I do think my list of categories helps us appreciate his contributions. Cotton's earlier writing was primarily existential with a good dose of cheating. Seymour set down rules and remedies for two card games and is, I think, under-appreciated for his contributions. Hoyle assumed knowledge of rules and dealt with remedies; he was the first to do so for whist. While I do wish he had distinguished partnership agreements from strategy, Hoyle was the first to discuss strategy for any card game. All-in-all, I think his reputation as the father of whist is well deserved.

The Nature of Gaming Literature (part 1)

Obviously, I've looked at a lot of books on gaming. For this essay, I want to jump above the minutia of cancels or the effect of copyright law on Hoyle's body of work and discuss gaming literature more abstractly. The goal, however, will tie back to Hoyle, by showing in what ways Hoyle's work broke new ground.

When I see a discussion of, say, whist in a book, I mentally place it into one or more of these categories: (1) existential; (2) rules; (3) remedies; (4) strategy; (4a) partnership agreement (5) cheating. This is my model and my definitions--others may differ and I'd be eager to hear other points of view. Let me discuss each in turn.

Existential

Existential writing, my term, does little more than document a game's existence. While this may sound trivial, it is actually important historically to learn both when a game was introduced and who played it. For example, the long list of games played by Rabelais's Gargantua tells us something of the games that were known in the 1530s. The references to whist in Jane Austen indicate that it was a society game in the early 19th century. Cavendish makes much use of existential sources in his historical treatments of whist and piquet.

Existential sources can also date the vocabulary of a game. For example what contract bridge players called a "cross-ruff" was known to Hoyle as a "see-saw," a term that in bridge means something completely different.

Rules

By rules, I mean detailed instruction about how to play the game legally. For example, the rules of whist are trivial, given concisely on the wonderful website pagat.com. Knowing only what is written in those half dozen short paragraphs, you could begin to play whist immediately. You would play poorly, of course, but legally. I find it fascinating that these rules are nowhere clearly expressed in any whist book I know! All the writers from Hoyle to Cavendish and beyond assume the reader knows the mechanics of the game, a thought made explicit by Cotton in The Compleat Gametser, noting that "every child almost of eight years old has a competent knowledge" of whist.

Seymour's Court Gamester, (1718, with a later edition available for download) is a rare exception, providing rules for the games of ombre and piquet. Is there any earlier example in English of a set of rules for a game?

Remedies

It is easy to violate the rules of a game inadvertently. The dealer can give the wrong number of cards to a player or expose a card while dealing. A player may show his cards to a partner or opponent, may play out of turn, or may fail to follow suit. In backgammon, a player may move the incorrect number of pips, or play a checker forgetting that he has another on the bar. These irregularities happen with sufficient frequency, that the over time a set of remedies has evolved to restore equity.

I particularly like the chapter title Seymour uses to describe the remedies at Piquet: "Of the Accidents which happen at this Game, and the Penalties which attend them." (page 84). Hoyle's Laws of Whist are really such remedies:

I: If any person plays out of his turn, it is in the option of either of his adversaries to call the card so played, at any time in that deal, provided it does not make him revoke; or if either of the adverse party is to lead, he may desire his partner to name the suit he chooses to have him lead, and when a suit is then named, the partner must play it if he has it. (Laws of Whist)

It is interesting to realize that today, when playing games on a computer, violations cannot happen and remedies are unnecessary. A well-designed program will not permit an irregularity!

More on Strategy, Partnership Agreement and Cheating in the next essay.

The Covent-Garden Magazine

A detour on my Hoyle voyages...

In a previous essay, I mentioned a 1775 publication called The Annals of Gaming, anonymously written by "A Connoisseur", and wondered whether it was another reprint of Hoyle triggered by the end of copyright protection in 1774. According to bibliographer Frederic Jessel, The Annals of Gaming reprints the gaming material from a periodical called The Covent-Garden Magazine. I'll discuss the book in a later essay and give the reasons why I reject it as part of the Hoyle canon. In this essay, I will share the amusing history of The Covent-Garden Magazine and its ill-fated publisher George Allen. 

The magazine was serialized in forty-two parts from July 1772 until December 1775. The advertisement for the first number appeared in the London Evening Post of July 18-21, 1772:

On Saturday the 1^st of Aug. will be published, price 6d. to be continued the first of every month, as long as gallantry and gaming prevail in the fashionable world, embellished with a frontispiece, exhibiting that pious and celebrated mother Abbess, Charlotte Hayes, giving instructive lectures to her nuns, for the regulation of their conduct in their religious vocation. Also a well known Macaroni, making love to the famous Poll Kennedy, admirably designed and engraved, Number I. of  The Covent-Garden Magazine; or, Amorous Repository. Calculated for the entertainment of the polite world, and the finishing of a young gentleman’s education; intended as the pantheon of literature, where the gay, the voluptuous, the witty, and jocose, will be introduced into the company of the choice votaries of Bacchus and Venus, and enabled to figure with eclat at Arthur’s, Alma K’s, Boodle’s Newmarket, and all places of elegant entertainment. London: Printed for the authors, and sold by G. Allen, No. 59, in Pater-noster-row, and all other booksellers in Great Britain and Ireland.

Well, who would not want to subscribe to such a publication? You can get a flavor of the magazine from almost any of the advertisements. Number V treats the game of lansquenet "with all the frauds and artifices practiced at it" and publishes an "account of a snug rendezvous in the city for cuckolding common councilmen." (Public Advertiser of December 1, 1772). Number XII contains an account of backgammon and "the legerdemains practis'd at it" as well as a copper plate "exhibiting a whore's last shift." (General Evening Post of July 3, 1773).

Alas, as one might imagine, all did not go well for publisher George Allen. The London Chronicle or Universal Evening Post for November 27-30, 1773 reports:

Last Thursday the publisher of the Covent Garden Magazine was brought up to the Court of King's Bench, Westminster, to receive sentence for publishing what was judged an indecent print in that magazine for May last; the Court fined him 6s. 8d. and committed him to the King's Bench Prison for one month.

Allen continued to publish the magazine with no gap during his imprisonment. He addressed the matter of his punishment in a December 30, 1773 advertisement in the General Evening Post:

After the severities of the law, to which the publisher of the Covent-Garden Magazine has been exposed and undergone, the public cannot doubt of the resolution and fortitude with which the proprietors are resolved to prosecute this Miscellany. The publisher is now discharged from prison, and is happily settled in his old shop, No. 59 Paternoster-row, after having been immured several weeks, for publishing a humourous print in this magazine, which a scandalous informer thought proper to represent as an infamous publication, tending to prejudice the morals of the rising generation. The little success he has met with, will probably deter him, and all such innovators of public liberty, from pursuing the like scandalous practices; and the generous public, to whom the proprietors of this magazine acknowledge the greatest favours, may rely upon the exertion of their utmost abilities, and that no expense whatever shall be spared in conducting this work with a spirit suitable to its original plan; and they moreover pledge themselves to the public, to make such improvements, as may occur or be pointed out to them, resolving to make the Covent-Garden Magazine worthy of the extensive patronage it has received.

The advertisement continued by announcing issue XVIII for December, 1773.

A year later, in the London Evening Post of December 31, Allen advertises number XXX for December, 1774, also noting for the first time the availability of The Annals of Gaming; Or, A Players Sure Guide for 2s. 6d. That advertisement allows us to date the book with precision. The final issue of the magazine was advertised in the same paper on March 2, 1775—Number XXXII (misprinted XXXVII) of February, 1775.

The troubles were not over for Mr. Allen. On April 29, 1776 he was sentenced to three months imprisonment for publishing a book called The Rat-Trap (Timperley) and on June 8 of that year, he was adjudged bankrupt (Maxted).

Yes, a detour, but a worthwhile one, I hope!

References

• Frederic Jessel,  A Bibliography of Works in English on Playing Cards and Gaming. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1905. Available for download.
• Ian Maxted,  "Bankrupts" in Exeter Working Papers in British Book Trade History, published online.
• H. R. Plomer, et al. A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland, and Ireland From 1726 to 1775. Oxford University Press, 1930.
• C. H. Timperley, A Dictionary of Printers and Printing, London: H. Johnson, 1839. Available for download. 

The most important Hoyle after Hoyle

The last authorized Hoyle, the "sixteenth" edition of 1775, had many competitors as the work had entered the public domain in 1774. The authorized edition was published by a consortium headed up by Rivington, Wilkie, Crowder and Baldwin and despite losing their copyright protection, they were certainly the most aggressive in creating new editions of interest. They hired Charles Jones to edit Hoyle's Games Improved and brought out an edition in 1775 to compete both with their own book and with other "improved" editions. But I would argue that their second edition of 1779 is the most important edition of Hoyle published after his death in 1769.

Payne's Maxims for Whist
Levy [1338]

There is a hint of the publishers' strategy in the 1775 edition. The book expanded the section on whist to include the text of another work, Maxims for Playing the Game of Whist, London 1773. Maxims, by William Payne, was the second book in English on the game of whist after Hoyle. It sold well with two more editions appearing in 1778 even though it also appeared within the 1775 Hoyle's Games Improved.



HGI also added thirty pages about new games (billiards, cricket, Tennis quinze, hazard and lansquenet) to the two hundred pages of Hoyle's original writing. Of most interest is the inclusion of the newly revised rules of cricket:

Printed by Permission of Mr. Ridley in St. James's-Street. The Laws of Cricket; Revised at the Star and Garter, Pall-Mall, February 25, 1774, by a Committee of Noblemen and Gentlemen of Kent, Hampshire, Surry, Sussex, Middlesex, and London.  (page 210)

Mr. Ridley was the last-listed publisher in the consortium and was contributing his rights to the cricket laws which had been printed separately in 1775.

That strategy of incorporating separately printed gaming works into Hoyle's Games Improved continued in 1779 with the inclusion of several important works. 

The first example is an entirely new and greatly expanded section on billiards. "Marker" John Dew wrote a treatise on the game of billiards which he sold to a member of the consortium for four guineas in August, 1776 (British Library Add. 38728 f.55). The book was was not published until 1779, when the consortium issued it both separately and as part of Hoyle's Games Improved. An engraved plate with two views of the fortification billiards table appeared in both books.

The Perspective View of Fortification Billiards

The second is another work by William Payne, "teacher of mathematics." Today, Payne's An Introduction to the Game of Draughts (London 1756) is most remembered for the preface which has been conclusively attributed to Samuel Johnson. (Fleeman 56.1PD/1) A receipt has survived documenting the sale of the Draughts copyright to a member of the consortium: 

London Feb. 11 1779. In consideration of the Sum of Five Pounds and five Shillings by me this day received from Thomas Lowndes I do sell Leave to the said Thomas Lowndes & Partners a right to print for ever in a Book called Hoyles Games a Pamphlet called the Game of Drafts as written by my late Brother William Payne. Witness my Hand. Tho. Payne (British Library, Add. 38728 f.168)

Lowndes was another member of the publishing consortium.

The proprietors advertised the book on November 13, 1779 in the London Chronicle:

This day was published, a new edition, in 12mo, price 3s. only, Hoyles Games Improved: Being practical treatises on the following fashionable amusements, viz. Whist; Quadrille; Piquet; Chess; Back Gammon; *Drafts, by Mr. Payne, with the figure of a Draft Table; *Cricket, as now played by the nobility and gentry; *Tennis; *Quinze; *Mr. Payne's Maxims of Whist; *Hazard; *Lansquenet; *Billiards, by Mr. Dew, with plates...Notes are given to illustrate the games by Hoyle; and those marked * are additional improvements. Revised and corrected by Charles Jones, Esq...N. B. Mr. Dew's Treatise on Billiards may be had separate, price 1s. sewed.

The advertisement highlights the new authors and the inclusion of engravings.

Jones.2
Levy [1746]

In 1774-5 when the Hoyle copyright expired, it was unclear whether Beaufort, Charles Jones or the Annals of Gaming would become the market leader. With the addition of popular works by John Dew and William Payne in 1779, Rivington and partners won the marketing battle, as is evident by that fact that their Hoyle's Games Improved remained in print for more than 50 years until 1826. That is why I claim the 1779 Charles Jones edition as the most important Hoyle after Hoyle.

References

• J. D. Fleeman. A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Treating his published works from the beginnings to 1984. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2000).

Hoyle in the Public Domain (1775)

In my last essay, I discussed how English copyright law turned on its head with the 1774 decision in Donaldson v Beckett. Perpetual copyright was gone and Hoyle, one of the best sellers of the 18th century, was suddenly in the public domain. 1775 was to be an interesting year! 

Levy [1223]

On June 2, there was an advertisement for Hoyle's Games Improved, edited by James Beaufort, pictured at left. It was a near verbatim reprint of the "fifteenth" edition of Hoyle with additional chapters, presumably written by Beaufort, on billiards and tennis. It was a very cheaply printed book that was to see a second London edition in 1788. It later became the first American book on card games in 1796, issued in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.  

On June 9, one week later, the "sixteenth" edition of Mr.Hoyle's Games was advertised. It was the last to bear the name of Thomas Osborne in the imprint. Osborne died in 1767 and this was printed by assignment from him for thirteen copyright-holding booksellers led by Rivington, Wilkie, Crowder, and Baldwin. Hoyle had died in 1769 and, like the "fifteenth" edition (1771), his signature appears as a woodblock print. The advertisement disparages what was likely the Beaufort edition: 

This is the only genuine edition of Hoyle's Games, with his last corrections and improvements; and the proprietors cannot help giving this caution, that any copy of this book, not signed "Edmond Hoyle," at the back of the title page, is not to be depended upon as Mr. Hoyle's whatever may be pretended to impose upon the public.

Levy [1093]

 

A month later, a nearly identical consortium of booksellers headed by Rivington, Wilkie, Crowder, and Baldwin changed their marketing strategy and came out with their own Hoyle's Games Improved, edited by Charles Jones. It reprinted Hoyle, adding Billiards, Cricket, Tennis, Quinze, Hazard and Lansquenet. No longer did they seek to disparage the Beaufort edition, but added more and more games, a strategy that becomes more apparent with the 1779 edition edited by Jones, a book well worth its own essay. 

 

Further Charles Jones editions appeared in 1786, 1790, 1796, 1800, 1803, 1808, 1814, 1820, and 1826.

I need to do more work on the final version of Hoyle from 1775. The Annals of Gaming appeared that year, but I have found no newspaper advertisements, so I cannot say when it appeared in relation to the others. It consisted of extracts from Hoyle, with chapters on the games of Hazard, Tennis, Lansquenet, Billiards, Loo, Lottery, All-Fours and Comet, and Pope Joan. The author is given as "A Connoisseur"and portions of the work apparently were printed in Covent Garden Magazine, a periodical which began publication in July 1772. As I said, more work is required.

In any case, 1775 was quite a year for Hoyle!