Hoyle's Games Improved, Charles Jones (1800)

updated May 5, 2013, having located a copy of the separately published Treatise on Game Cocks

I have written about the Charles Jones editions of Hoyle a number of times. The booksellers who had owned the recently-expired Hoyle copyright brought out the first Charles Jones edition in 1775, followed  by a much more important edition in 1779. The work stayed in print until 1826, adding sections on various games with each new edition—it was the dominant edition of Hoyle for fifty years. This essay focuses on the edition of 1800, not because it is itself a particularly interesting work, but because it is the first for which the publishers' business records survive. The records tell an interesting story about the economics of bookselling in London at the turn of the 19th century. 

First, a short digression: There was a the third edition in 1786 and a fourth in 1790. The latter is the most collectible of all the Jones Hoyles as it is the first to mention the game of "goff or golf," "the favourite summer amusement in Scotland." (p288) The book is one of the earliest listed in Donovan & Murdoch, the standard bibliography of golfing literature. There are serious book collectors in the golfing world and the 1790 Jones edition of Hoyle commands a substantial premium over any of the others.

Copisarow copy
(click to enlarge)

At left is the title page for the 1796 fifth edition, bearing the imprint "printed for R. Baldwin,  B. Law, C. Dilly, T. Payne, W. Lowndes, James Scatcherd, E. Newbery, S. Bladon, G. and T. Wilkie, W. Miller and W. Stewart," a group of eleven booksellers.





 

Copisarow copy
(click to enlarge)

The title page for the sixth edition of 1800, pictured at right, shows the addition of some new games: Vingt et un, Reversis, Put, All Fours, Speculation, and an essay on Game Cocks. It also has a somewhat different imprint—Law, Dilly, Bladon and Miller have disappeared from the 1796 edition. Bedwell Law died in 1798; Samuel Bladon in 1799. Charles Dilly retired leaving Joseph Mawman as his successor. (See the British Book Trade Index)




Likely, Miller sold his interest to another bookseller, perhaps at one of the trade sales I have discussed earlier. The new names in 1800 were the firm of Longman and Rees, J. Lee, T. Hurst and J. Mawman.

It is the addition of the Longman firm that makes the book worthy of discussion. Business records for the Longman firm survive and were published on microfilm by Chadwyck-Healey, with a printed index (see here for one library's description of the archive). The archive tells a great deal about the 1800 publication. To appreciate the information in the archive, it is helpful to see the collation formula for the book: 12^o: A² B-O¹² P¹⁰. This means that the book was printed as a duodecimo, that is with twelves leaves to each sheet of paper. Gatherings B through O make thirteen sheets (as is typical, there is no gathering J) and the short gatherings A and P were likely printed on a single sheet, the fourteenth.

The entry in the archive is dated May 15, 1800 and begins:

Hoyle's Game by Jones 12^o N^o 3000
Treatise on Game Cocks 12^o N^o 500

Thus, Longman et al printed 3000 copies of the Hoyle and 500 of the treatise on cock-fighting. A single copy of the treatise on game cocks survives at the British Library, printed for Baldwin, Payne, et al, in 1800. When one of the publishers, Wilkie, left the trade, his stock was sold at a trade sale on February 24, 1814. At that sale his 75 copies of the Treatise on Game Cocks went unsold, representing, as we shall see, more than half of the books he was allocated in 1800. The treatise must have been a poor seller.

The entry goes on to list expenses in printing the book, expenses which would be shared among the booksellers in proportion to their share of the copyright. The biggest expense was for paper, just over 70£. The Hoyle would have required 42,000 sheets (3000 copies at 14 sheets each). The section on game cocks in Hoyle was 24 pages or 12 leaves, so perhaps the separately published work was 500 copies of one duodecimo sheet. The printer charged 2£ 4s. per sheet for typesetting, a total of 30£ 16s. for the 14 sheets, plus an additional 2£ 17s. for tables, fractions, etc., as they required extra composition. The fact that the printer charged for fourteen sheets confirms that there was no additional typesetting for Game Cocks—that treatise must have been a separate issue of the section from Hoyle.

There were further charges for the engraved plate of billiards,  pictured here from the 1779 edition and for woodcuts of a backgammon and a draughts board. There were charges for meetings at "Coffee House," presumably for food and drink when the publishers met. Lastly, although I have not located any advertisements for the book, advertising charges exceeded 20£. If there are costs associated with binding the books, I cannot discern them from the archive—perhaps each bookseller had his own copies bound. Total charges were 137£ 10s.

The Hoyle sold for 4s., so the entire print run retailed for 600£. The treatise on Game Cocks may have sold for a shilling or two, adding another 25 or 50£ to the income had it been successful. The Hoyle, however, was a success—the 3000 copies must have sold out quickly as a new edition appeared in 1803. Of course this P&L omits the money the booksellers would have had to pay for the copyright. I don't have information about any transactions in the copyright near 1800, but in 1778, Thomas Lowndes paid 1£ 15s. for a 1/72 interest in the Jones edition of Hoyle, making the copyright worth £126 at the time. (British Library, Addison ms 38370 f. 13) Although it must have been worth more in 1800, publishing Hoyle was certainly a profitable enterprise for the booksellers! 

Most interesting is data giving the allocation of books to each member of the consortium. From this, we can calculate the ownership of each bookseller.

bookseller	Hoyles	Game Cocks	ownership
Baldwin	500	80	1/6
Hurst	83	14	1/36
Lee	166	28	1/18
Longman & Co.	250	42	1/12
Lowndes	418	69	5/36
Mawman	21	4	1/144
Newberry	250	42	1/12
Payne	166	28	1/18
Scatherd	250	42	1/12
Stewart	21	4	1/144
Wilkie	875	146	7/24
total	3000	500

It is remarkable that shares as small as one part in 144 were traded among the booksellers. Note also that the order of the booksellers on the imprint seems to bear no relationship the size of their ownership interest or the order in which they acquired their shares.

My Hoyle research focuses on the 18th century and so I will stop with the Jones edition of 1800. For those who want to carry on into the 19th century, Longman & Co. continued to be involved in another half dozen editions of the Charles Jones Hoyle through 1826. Comparable business records survive and provide a fascinating look into the economics of the London book trade.

The Doctrine of Chances (1754)

(updated November 17, 2011, February 21, 2013)

In his treatises on whist, backgammon, piquet, quadrille, and brag, Hoyle had briefly discussed the mathematical aspects of each game. He provided a somewhat fuller treatment of probability in a 1754 work—An Essay towards making the Doctrine of Chances easy to those who understand Vulgar Arithmetick only. The book, a minor footnote in the histories of both gaming and mathematics, has quite an odd publishing history.

The title recalls a much more important work on probability by Abraham De Moivre, The Doctrine of Chances: or, a Method of Calculating the Probability of Events in Play (1718) with subsequent editions in 1738 and 1756, the last of which is freely available here.

In his landmark history of probability, Isaac Todhunter devotes nearly 70 pages to De Moivre's work and a scant two paragraphs to Hoyle's:

Some works on Games of Chance are ascribed to Hoyle in Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica. I have seen only one of them which is entitled: An Essay towards making the Doctrine of Chances easy to those who understand Vulgar Arithmetick only: to which is added, some useful tables on annuities for lives &c. &c. &c. By Mr Hoyle... It is not dated; but the date 1754 is given in Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica.

The work is in small octavo size, with large type. The title, preface, and dedication occupy VIII pages, and the text itself occupies 73 pages. Pages 1-62 contain rules, without demonstration, for calculating chances in certain games; and the remainder is devoted to tables of annuities, and to Halley's Breslau table of life, with a brief explanation of the latter. I have not tested the rules. (Todhunter p322)

Where De Moivre used games to advance the mathematical theory of probably, Hoyle used probability to provide rules of thumbs for gamesters—Hoyle's Chances lacks mathematical importance.

The publishing history of the Chances should be viewed in light of the unsuccessful publication of the treatise on Brag by John Jolliffe (1751), discussed here. Like Brag, the book was sold by subscription as is evident from a series of notices in the Public Advertiser:

Next month will be published, By Subscription, at Half a Guinea, The Doctrine of Chances made easy to those who understand Vulgar Arithmetick only. By Mr. Hoyle. Subscriptions taken in by the Author, and Mr. Jolliffe, in St. James's street. (Public Advertiser, January 23, 1754)

Beginning in late February and continuing into March, the same advertisement was published with the heading "Speedily will be published" and finally on June 16 it was announced as "This Day is publish'd."

The imprint of the book is curious, particularly in comparison with Brag. In 1751, Brag appeared with the imprint "printed for and sold by J. Jolliffe, bookseller." The words "printed for" suggest that Jolliffe was the publisher and had paid Hoyle for the copyright. In contrast, Chances is "sold by J. Jolliff (sic)" suggesting that Jolliffe was only a distributor. The book was not entered into the register at Stationers Hall, so we don't have that evidence as to the owner of the copyright, but it is likely that Hoyle retained the copyright—perhaps Jolliffe was unwilling to purchase it because of the poor sales of Brag.

Chances sold for half a guinea, and, like Brag, it did not sell well initially. From 1748 to1755 Thomas Osborne (and William Reeve) were selling various issues of Mr. Hoyle's Treatises (discussed here), followed by Osborne's "eleventh" edition in 1755 and "twelfth" in 1760. Just as Osborne began to advertise the "twelfth" edition, he began to promote two other books:

Tuesday next will be published, Dedicated to the Right Hon. the Earl of Northumberland, Price 3s. 6d. sewed in Marble Paper, An Essay towards making the Game of Chess easily learned, by those who know the Moves only, without the Assistance of a Mater. By Mr. Hoyle, Printed for T. Osborne, in Gray's Inn; R. Baldwin, at the Rose, and S. Crowder, at the Looking-Glass, in Pater-noster Row. 

Of whom may be had, Price 2s. 6d. sewed, Mr. Hoyle's Essay towards making the Doctrine of Chances easy to those who understand Vulgar Aritmetic only. To which are added, some useful Tables on Annuities for Lives, &c &c.

No Copies of these Books are genuine, but those that are signed by the Author. (Public Advertiser, December 24, 1760)

We'll save the discussion of Chess for another time, and focus on Chances. This Osborne version is not listed in ESTC and but a single copy survives at the Bodleian Library, shelf mark Jessel e.647(1). An examination of the book reveals that it is a reissue of the 1754 edition with a cancel title page. thus Chances.1.2. Again, the imprint is odd: "London: Sold by T. Osborne [and others]." It seems that Hoyle had unsold copies of the book, terminated the arrangement with Jolliffe and hired Osborne as a new distributor, selling the book at a much lower price to coincide with the new work on Chess. It is also interesting that the verso of the cancel title has an erratum, noting that "in page 57, line 2, read for doing it instead of against doing it." Chess, by the way, has the imprint "printed for Thomas Osborne [and others]" suggesting that Osborne owned the rights.

It was only the 1760 reissue that sparked the Irish reprinters.George and Alexander Ewing reprinted the work in 1761, also incorporating it into The Polite Gamester.

Chances.2
Levy [1663]

In 1764, Osborne reprinted the Doctrine of Chances, pictured at left and freely available for download here. Here the imprint suggests that Osborne and Baldwin owned the copyright: "Printed for T. Osborne, in Gray's-Inn, and R. Baldwin, at the Rose in Pater-noster Row." Note, by the way, the small piece of drab paper affixed to the title page. This is a remnant of the original paper wrapper for the book.



The autographs, pictured below, provide further evidence that Osborne and Baldwin owned the copyright. The title page notes "No copies of this book are genuine, but those that are signed by the proprietors on the back of this title"  Hoyle did not autograph the verso in any copy of this edition I have seen—only the signatures of Osborne and Baldwin appear. Osborne and Baldwin must have been the proprietors and Hoyle's contract with Osborne to sign his early works (see my "Pirates, Autographs, and a Bankruptcy" p144) did not apply to Chances.

(click to enlarge)

We are left with this list of separately published editions of The Doctrine of Chances:

• Chances.1.1: London: Sold by J. Jolliffe (1754) 

• Chances.1.2: London: Sold by Osborne, Crowder, and Baldwin (1760), a reissue of Chances.1.1

• Chances.D.1: Dublin: Printed for the Ewings (1761)

• Chances.2: London: Printed for Osborne and Baldwin (1764)

References

• Isaac Todhunter. A History of the Mathematical Theory of Probability from the Time of Pascal to that of Laplace. Cambridge and London: McMillan and Co. 1865. Reprinted New York: Chelsea Publishing Company. 1949.

A Short Treatise on the Game of Brag (1751)

(updated February 26, 2012 as I have located additional copies)

In 1748, Hoyle added "thirteen new cases never before published" to the section on whist in Mr. Hoyle's Treatises. Those few pages were his first new writing since 1744. As I discussed in a recent essay, booksellers Thomas Osborne and William Reeve reissued Mr. Hoyle's Treatises under various titles a number of times from 1748 to 1755.

Hoyle's next writing was an entirely new work, A Short Treatise on the Game of Brag, in 1751. The game of brag most resembles three-card poker, but with betting rules that look strange to a modern player. Interestingly, the treatise on brag was never incorporated into the any of the London collections of Hoyle's works. There is every reason to believe that it was an unsuccessful effort for the publisher.

Hoyle entered A Short Treatise on the Game of Brag in the register of books at Stationers Hall on January 18, 1750/1, listing himself as the sole copyright holder. On January 22, 1750/1, an announcement appeared in the General Advertiser:

This day is published, A Treatise on Bragg by Mr. Hoyle. To which is added the laws of the game, with some calculations. Sold by J. Jolliffe, Bookseller, next door to White's Chocolate House in St. James's Street, at the same place may be had, neatly printed to frame, The Laws on Bragg separate, Price 2s. 6d. Where subscribers may have their books on sending their receipts. The books and laws are sign'd by the author, and whoever pyrates or sells any pyratical edition will be prosecuted, they being enter'd in the Hall Books.

There are many points of interest. First, Hoyle has found a new publisher, John Jolliffe. Recall that Hoyle originally contracted with Francis Cogan to publish all of his early works. Cogan also paid Hoyle to autograph each copy (see my Pirates, Autographs, and a Bankruptcy, p144). Cogan, nearing bankruptcy, sold the rights to Thomas Osborne in 1745. I find it striking that Hoyle chose not to work with Osborne on Brag, but found a new publisher. No evidence survives detailing the financial arrangement between Hoyle and Jolliffe. Second, as the advertisement makes clear, Jolliffe was familiar with the publishing history of whist. As Cogan and Osborne had done with Whist, Jolliffe published the laws of brag separately, secured Hoyle's signature on the books and the laws, and warned against piracy. Third, Jolliffe sold the book by subscription, with customers paying in advance for the book. There certainly must be pre-publication advertisements offering the book, although I have not found any.

There are two reasons to believe that the subscription price was half a guinea, that is, 10s. 6d. First is an advertisement for the Irish reprint of Brag that I shall discuss below. Second, in 1754, Jolliffe sold another Hoyle treatise, An Essay on the Doctrine of Chances, by subscription for half a guinea. That work will be discussed in a subsequent essay.

A month later, Jolliffe had a briefer advertisement offering the treatise for 2s. 6d. and the laws for 1s. (Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer, February 28) If the treatise sold by subscription for half a guinea, the new price was a substantial reduction. Jolliffe dropped the price of the laws from 2s. 6d. to 1s. Likely neither sold well. No further London editions of Brag were published and few copies survive today. No copies of the laws survive—perhaps they were destroyed unsold, as were hundreds of copies of the Osborne laws of whist.

Bookseller John Exshaw quickly reprinted Brag in Dublin. He advertised in the Dublin Courant of March 2, 1750/1 :

Brag.D.1
Levy [1747]

 

Thursday next will be publish'd by John  Exshaw, price 4d. A Short Treatise on the Game of Brag: containing the laws of the game, also calculations, shewing the odds of winning or losing certain hands dealt.
N. B. The price of the London edition is half a guinea. 

It is the Exshaw advertisement that suggests that Brag sold for half a guinea by subscription, although it ignores the fact that Jolliffe lowered the price to 2s. 6d. by late February.

Like its London counterpart, the Exshaw edition is scarce, with copies at the Dublin City Libraries and UNLV in addition to mine. A copy at the British Library was destroyed in World War Two. The UNLV copy is bound with a 1752 of The Polite Gamester printed for Peter Wilson and I suspect that an examination of more copies of the Gamester will show that they contain the brag treatise as well. Updated February 26, 2012: I have been in touch with other libraries holding a copy of the Wilson's 1752 Polite Gamester. It turns out that the Cleveland Public Library and the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow) also have copies containing the treatise on Brag.

Neither the game of brag, nor Hoyle's book were especially popular. Indeed no other books have been published on the game, although many gaming anthologies discuss it briefly. It remains Hoyle's most obscure work.

Schools for Whist?

Hoyle was a tutor at whist before writing his Short Treatise on the game and instruction in gaming became a target of satire. One of the most extraordinary examples is a 1752 pamphlet called A Preface Designed...for the Polite Gamester, 1752. It is excessively rare--only a single copy survives at the Dublin City Library and Archive as part of the J. T. Gilbert Collection. 

Reproduced with permission of
the Dublin City Library and Archive
(click to enlarge)

Although no printing location is given, the pamphlet was clearly written in Dublin. The book is styled a preface to The Polite Gamester, which as we have seen, was the Dublin title for Hoyle's treatises. Further, the note "To the Printer" is signed "Jeff Humbugg, Bardin's Chocolate House, May 8, 1752". Peter Bardin, an actor, established a Chocolate House in Fowne's Court, Dublin—it was converted into a post office in 1755. (Gilbert, as in the J. T. Gilbert Collection, Vol. II, pp. 320-1)



Two competing Dublin editions of The Polite Gamester had appeared in February 1752 (Ewing.C and Wilson.A), perhaps prompting this preface. The story of those books and the competition between them will have to wait for another time.

The book begins with the pseudonymous Humbugg lauding Hoyle:

His book, though small in size, is yet weighty as to its contents and was the produce of a long series of practice and close application (p. 8)

Then he complains about the difficulty of portions of the text:

At first sight, and to the young beginner, or mere novice he will appear a little difficult. I remember myself, and I honestly declare it, that at first dipping into him, I did not enter into the true spirit and meaning of many passages. (pp. 8-9)

More importantly, Humbugg, argues, the reading must be supplemented with expensive experience, by which he means expensive losses at gaming. The solution is ingenious, consisting of two strands. The first is:

"To have a number of schools erected at the public charge, in the several cities and large towns of this kingdom; where, under the direction of experienced, and able masters, the several games may be taught (p. 10-11)

The more amusing suggestion is that:

...the youth of both sexes [be] made perfect by going through a complete course of experiments; in the performance of which they shall play only with the public money; and thus the people of lower rank, will have an opportunity of sending their children that they may learn to game with reason and judgment. (p. 11)

Gaming with public money? I'll leave it to the reader to make twenty-first century analogies with sub-prime lending.

The Humbugg piece is the first satire I have seen suggesting schools for gaming, but others followed. The periodical The Connoisseur included a quite similar piece in the issue of March 20, 1755:

The education of females is at present happily elevated far above the ordinary employments of domestic œconomy; and if any school is wanted for the improvement of young ladies, I may venture to say, it should be a school for whist. Mr. Hoyle used, indeed, to wait on ladies of quality at their own houses to give them lectures in this science: but as that learned master has left off teaching, they can have no instructions but from his incomparable treatise; and this, I am afraid, is so abstruse, and abounding with technical terms, that even those among the quality, who are tolerably well grounded in the Science, are scarce able to unravel the perplexity of has cases, which are many of them as intricate as the hardest proposition in Euclid. A school for whist would, therefore, be of excellent use; where young ladies of quality might be gradually instructed in the various branches of lurching, renouncing, finessing winning the ten-ace, and getting the odd trick, in the same manner as common misses are taught to write, read, and work at their needle.

Another periodical, The World, included the following letter on May 20, 1756:

When [my son] had finished his studies at the university, and perfected himself in town in all the necessary accomplishments of a young man of fashion, I sent him under the direction of a very excellent tutor, on his travels through France, Italy and Germany; from which, after an absence of four years, he returned last winter, improved beyond my utmost hopes. 

But, alas, sir! when I expected to see him the admiration of all companies, and to have been ever where congratulated on the happiness of having such a son, I found, from the universal attention to cards, that his acquirements were totally unnoticed, and that all the cost and trouble I had been at in his education, answered no other purpose than to make him company for himself, and a few unfashionable friends who have no commerce with the world.

If this insatiable passion continues, it were as well if our public schools and universities were abolished, and that travel and all other means of acquiring knowledge and refinement were at once prohibited; and in their places, other seminaries erected in this metropolis, and proper masters appointed, to instruct our children in the rudiments of brag, cribbage and lansquenet, till they were of a proper age to study whist, and the other games of skill, at the academy of Mr. Hoyle.

Yes, gaming was quite the rage in Dublin and London, with Hoyle was seen as the cornerstone to education.

References

J. T. Gilbert, A History of the City of Dublin, Dublin: McGlashan and Gill, 1859.

What's in a Name?

What do you call a book? Generally, this is straightforward—take a look at the title page. However, many of the editions and issues of Hoyle were published without an overall title page, causing problems both for rare book catalogers and for bibliographers. The problems will be highlighted in this essay. The springboard for the discussion is a series of essays I have written--on the Hoyle collections, on the first published edition of Hoyle's works in 1748, and on its four reissues from 1748 to 1755.

First the collections. I have demonstrated that Osborne issued collections of Hoyle from 1745-7 and argued that Cogan likely did as well from 1743-4. These collections are not cataloged as such in libraries or ESTC because there is no overall title page, merely titles for the individual treatises on whist, quadrille, piquet, and backgammon. So, if one looks up Whist.6 in ESTC, the holdings will include all copies of the individual treatise as well as copies where it appears as a collection, that is, in a publisher's binding with other treatises. ESTC will also include copies where it appears with other treatises in a customer binding.

Sometimes the library shelf mark will reveal the nature of the book. For example, the Bodleian Library has a copy of Whist.6 with shelf mark Jessel f.544(1). The parenthetical "one" indicates that Whist.6 is the first title in a volume containing multiple books. Jessel f.544(2) is Obsorne's reissue of Cogan's Quadrille, and so on. Other times, the library will provide copy-specific notes. The Beinecke Library at Yale has a copy of Whist.6 and they note that the book is bound with Quadrille, Piquet and Backgammon. While the shelf marks and notes tell that the books are bound together, there is no clue as to whether the books were issued as such by the publisher or bound by the customer. On the other hand, ESTC shows a University of Texas copy, shelf mark, GV1277.H89 1746, and only by checking their online catalogue do we learn that it is also bound with Backgammon of 1745. 

The early Dublin collections are less problematic because they were issue with a collected title page, The Polite Gamester, and are so cataloged in ESTC and elsewhere. 

A different sort of problem appears with the first collected edition of Hoyle and its four reissues. For convenience, I'll repeat the five books:

• Games.1.1: The Osborne collected edition
• Games.1.2: Reeve's 1748 reissue of Games.1.1
• Games.1.3 and Games.1.4: Two distinct 1750 reissues of Games.1.1
• Games.1.5: A single 1755 reissue by Osborne and Reeve

[Aside: I am deliberately distinguishing between the terms "collection" and "collected edition." I am using "collection" for a reissue of books in a publisher's binding which were also issued separately. An "edition" requires a new setting of type as was the case with Games.1.1 where the treatises were not issued individually.]

These books are quite awkward to name and hence to catalogue. Games.1.1 is problematic because there is no overall title page. There are fortunately strong hints that the book is a single collected edition and not a collection of separate works. First is an overall half title, Mr. Hoyle's Treatises, although the half title may not survive in any particular copy. Second, the pagination and signatures are relatively continuous, suggesting it was printed as a unit. In fact ESTC catalogs it using the half title.

Absent those clues, it would be easy to imagine the book cataloged as four separate books, particularly since the imprint and date appear only on the section titles and not on the half title. Indeed  ESTC also lists an "eighth" edition of whist as ESTC T79889, cataloging the book as though it were a collection. I've seen one of the two copies listed there and it includes all the treatises and the half title--perhaps the cataloger was not used to identifying the book from the half title. I'll have to check on the other copy, but I suspect that this is a ghost entry in ESTC and the holdings should be merged into Games.1.1, a book catalogued as Mr. Hoyle's Treatises based on the half title.

Games.1.2 and Games.1.4 are clearer, because they have the overall title page The Accurate Gamester's Companion. Both books are cataloged under that title, even though a number of copies also have the Osborne half title.

The problem returns with Games.1.5. I have a copy with the same half-title used in Games.1.1. Unfortunately most copies lack the half title and the ESTC catalogers did not call the book Mr. Hoyle's Treatises, as they did for Games.1.1. The book is identified by the section title for whist and the title is given as the "tenth" edition of A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist, printed for T. Osborne, 1750. Fortunately ESTC notes that it includes the other treatises. I do think this should be called Mr. Hoyle's Treatises.

Similar is Games.1.5 where none of the copies I have seen has an overall half title or title page. As with Games.1.3, ESTC catalogs the book based on the section title for whist, noting the presence of the other treatises. Here I see no good option. It was jointly sold by Osborne and Reeve, and calling it either Mr. Hoyle's Treatises or The Accurate Gamester's Companion is misleading. Equally misleading, however, is the current practice of calling the book a "tenth" edition of Whist, ignoring the fact that it always appears with Quadrille, Piquet, and Backgammon.Why didn't Osborne add a real title page?

On a separate note, I want to mention two other London Hoyle's listed in ESTC during the time period 1748-55:

• ESTC T87538 is catalogued as a "tenth" edition of Whist published without the other treatises. I've seen one of the two listed copies and discussed it earlier. It is really a copy of Whist.7 (1747) with the title page replaced by the section title of Whist used for Osborne.1750. Presumably Osborne had some unsold copies of Whist.7 which he spruced up with a 1750 title page to make them salable—making this a reissue of Whist.7. 
• ESTC T224799: This is a piracy of the Whist section from Osborne.1748. Only a single copy survives at the British Library. There is no record of any litigation. It is an octavo, rather than a duodecimo, as were the authorized Hoyles, and the book is not autographed by Hoyle or Osborne.

Reissues of Mr. Hoyle's Treatises (1748-1755)

With the release of Mr. Hoyle's Treatises in 1748, Osborne began to sell Hoyle's works only as a single volume and not as individual treatises (as I discuss here). The book was reissued several times over the next few years until a new edition appeared in late 1756. Osborne reissued the book himself and apparently entered into a relationship with another bookseller, William Reeve, to distribute it. This seems to be the only venture between the two booksellers. While no documentation of the distribution arrangement survives, we can infer much about it from the physical books and newspaper advertisements.

For clarity, I am going to refer to the various books as follows:

• Games.1.1: The Osborne edition of 1748, the "eighth" edition
• Games.1.2: Reeve's 1748 reissue as The Accurate Gamester's Companion. the "ninth" edition
• Games.1.3: Osborne's reissue of 1750, the "tenth" edition
• Games.1.4: Reeve's 1750 reissue of 1750, a "ninth/tenth" edition 
• Games.1.5: A joint reissue by Osborne and Reeve in 1755, a "tenth" edition

Osborne.1748 collates 12^o: [A]² B-D¹² E⁶ F-L¹². The preliminaries consist of: A1r, the half title from which I derive the name of the book; A1v advertisement for another Osborne publication; A2r section title for the "eighth" edition of whist; and A2v "To the Reader" with the autograph signature of Hoyle. All of the reissues share the same setting of type for gatherings B through L, which makes them reissues rather than editions as a matter of definition. As we shall see, the preliminaries vary.

Osborne advertised Games.1.1 in various London newspapers from March 5, 1748 until April 30, 1748. Osborne's advertisements do not overlap with Reeve's, which appeared from November 21, 1748 to March 9, 1749. Here is a sample Reeve advertisement from The General Advertiser:

(click to enlarge)

The text is subtly different from Osborne's advertisements earlier in the year. The advertised title is still Mr. Hoyle's Games Complete, but speaks of a "ninth," rather than "eighth" edition. The book is "printed for T. Osborne, and sold by W. Reeve" at Reeve's shop, with no location given for Osborne. The advertisement does not offer the Laws of Whist. Despite the differences, Reeve.1748 is still an authorized edition as is apparent from the promise of Hoyle's autograph.

Games.1.2
Levy [1766]

The physical book has a different title altogether, The Accurate Gamester's Companion, reminiscent both of the predecessors to Hoyle—The Compleat Gamester and The Court Gamester—and the Dublin reprint of Hoyle, The Polite Gamester. The title page, printed in red and black and pictured at right is quite charming.





The book is, however, a reissue of Games.1.1 and not a separate edition. Different copies have slightly different preliminaries, but Reeve had a new bifolium (a folded sheet of two leaves or four pages) printed. The first leaf has a blank recto and a verso with advertisements for others of his books. The recto of the second leaf is the red and black title page, with a blank verso. One copy (NvLN [GV1243 H69 1748]) inserts the bifolium in place of the Osborne half title and advertisement, while another (L [58.b.18]) retains the half title, but wraps the Reeve advertisement around so that it appears as the fourth leaf. In either configuration, the book has the peculiar property that the new title page says it is a "ninth" edition of whist, while the section title for whist says it is an "eighth" edition.

In his bibliography, Jessel wrote of this book, "It would appear that Osborne sold his remainder to W. Reeve, who issued it as a ninth edition." That may be correct—it is interesting that Osborne ceased advertising his version of the book while Reeve's was for sale. On the other hand, the relationship between Reeve and Osborne continued with more reissues.

The October 21, 1749 issue of the Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer  carried an advertisement for a "tenth" edition of Mr. Hoyle's Games Compleat printed for "T. Osborne, in Gray's-Inn; and W. Reeve, at Shakespear's Head, near Serjeant's Inn-Gate, in Fleet-street." By giving the locations of both booksellers, the advertisement suggests that both were selling it. Indeed two more versions appeared, again with the same setting of type as Games.1.1, but with new preliminaries.

Games.1.3 retains the half title "Mr. Hoyle's Treatises" but has a new leaf A2, pictured below. The recto is a new section title for whist, a "tenth" edition dated 1750. The version is a "To the Reader" now signed both by Hoyle and Osborne. The Reeve version, Reeve.1750, maintains the bifolium from the Games.1.2, but, adds the pictured leaf so that both booksellers are offering a "tenth" edition.
 

Section Title for Whist
Games.1.3
Levy [1039]

To the Reader
signed by Hoyle and Osborne
(click to enlarge)

 The joint advertisements continued until December 31, 1750. Reeve continued to advertise his issue separately into 1751. In 1755, a final reissue appears. This has neither Osborne's half title "Mr. Hoyle's Treatises" nor Reeve's title "The Accurate Gamester's Companion." It begins with a new section title for whist, still a "tenth" edition, but now with the imprint "London: printed for T. Osborne, at Gray’s-Inn; and sold by W. Reeve, in Fleet-Street, 1755." With this book, the long series of reissues ends; Osborne publishes a new edition, a new setting of type, in 1756.

This has been an awkward set of books to sort out. In the next essay, I will discuss some of the issues I have glossed over here.

The Fans of Hoyle

Obviously my passion is for printed books, but my interest in Hoyle can lead in strange directions. One example is this nineteenth century token used for scoring at whist. The image was used on the cover of the issue of Script and Print that included my article on the Hoyle piracies.

Levy [216]

I recently found a couple of Hoyle items that are even more unusual. Pictured below is a lady's fan. Be sure to click for a larger photograph, as I've loaded high resolution images that you'll find rewarding!

Levy [1756]

(click to enlarge)

As you can see in the detail at right, it is titled The Games of Whist, Quadrille, Lansquenet and Quinze agreeable to the late Improvement on Hoyle. &cc. Hoyle??? Well, as much as I have studied Hoyle, I had no inkling that such things existed!


This fan and another pictured below are now part of my collection. I have spent many years learning about printed books, but am a novice when it comes to fans. It turns out that under a 1735 law, English printed fans must bear the date of issue and the name of the publisher (de Vere Green, p76). Indeed this fan was published by T. B. on January 6, 1791. The mount is engraved and colored by hand, while the sticks are sandalwood.

It will be an interesting project to determine how much of the text, which I've only just started to study, is Hoyle's. Hoyle never wrote on Lansquenet or Qunize, and those portions seem to be abridged from Hoyle's Games Improved, edited by Charles Jones (1775), discussed in an earlier essay.

The sections on whist are a bit harder to track down. The text on the fan begins, "Begin with your strong suit. Sequences are always eligible leads." Is this a paraphrase of Hoyle who wrote in 1742 "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..."? (A Short Treatise on Whist, p.11)

Perhaps the text was taken from William Payne, who wrote Maxims on the Game of Whist: (1773), borrowing liberally from Hoyle:

1. Begin with the suit of which you have most in number...2. If you hold equal numbers in different suits, begin with the strongest...3. Sequences are always eligible leads. (pp.1-2).

This sounds better. Certainly the use of "eligible" is suggestive. As noted earlier, Payne's text was incorporated into Hoyle's Games Improved in 1779. All of the whist texts are so similar that it will be difficult, I think, to identify a source definitively.

The text on Piquet begins "To gain the point generally makes 10 points difference, therefore when you discard you must endeavor to gain it, but not risk the losing of the cards." This comes from A Short Treatise on Piquet (1744) where Hoyle wrote "To gain the point, generally makes ten points difference; therefore when you discard you must endeavor to gain it, but not risk the losing of the cards by so doing." (pp.4-5) But for Hoyle, this is his fifth general rule for piquet while the fan ignores Hoyle's first four rules.

The fan is an example of the aide mémoire, "a particular class of fan which relies for its embellishment on the printing of information of a practical kind upon its mounts." These included cartographic, historic, and botanical subjects, as well as "words and music of songs, the rules and scoring for a game of cards, directions for the figures of country dances..." and so on. (de Vere Green, p.88).

The  second fan has the same text, but the engraving is of a lesser quality. The sticks are lacquered in black and gold. No date or publisher appears, but as de Vere Green notes, the required information was almost always printed on the lower part of the mount and is often trimmed when pasted on the sticks. (p. 75). Or, I wonder suspiciously, was piracy as much a problem for fan makers as it was for booksellers?

Levy [1755]

References

Bertha de Vere Green, Fans Over the Ages, A Collector's Guide. South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1979.