2025: The Year of McTear

I have been thinking of 2025 as the Year of McTear for reasons that will become apparent in this essay. But the story begins earlier. Two years ago I gave an online talk to the FABS Handpress Era Group (see here) about some trictrac books in my collection. I discussed a handful of books including Le Grand Trictrac:  

Le Grand Trictrac 
Levy [1070]

I purchased the book nearly thirty years ago, but discovered something new about it in preparing for the talk. I recognized the inscription on the title page as that of J. S. McTear, dated November 25, 1896. John Smith McTear (1842-1913) was a Belfast attorney, a collector of gaming literature, an inventor of card games, and an author. I knew a bit about his collection from his correspondence in Notes and Queries. In the June 11, 1898 issue he wrote "I have a considerable and varied collection of books (upwards of two hundred) on card games, ranging over the present and two previous centuries..." In other correspondence, he identified specific books he owned--a rare first edition of Hoyle's Whist from 1742 (N&Q , November 24, 1900) and a second edition of 1743 (N&Q November 26, 1898). 

At least one of his books, mine on trictrac, made it to the trade  What happened to the rest of the books? I queried the best-known of the rare book mailing lists, EXLIBRIS-L and SHARP-L to see if any of the members knew of libraries with his books, but had no success. To range a bit further afield, I tried another list that is composed of rare book and special collections librarians in the UK, LIS-RAREBOOKS. After a couple of promising, but unsuccessful leads, one list member pointed me to the online catalogue of the Linen Hall Library in Belfast. 

A catalogue record showed that McTear had donated a book he had written to the library, inscribing it "To the Belfast Library and Society for Promoting Knowledge with the author's compliments." The inscription suggested a relationship between the McTear and the Belfast library, and I wondered if others of his books might be found there. I searched their catalogue and found many gaming books that might have been McTear’s but were not identified as his in the catalogue. These included first and second editions of Hoyle’s Whist, books McTear was known to own.  After much correspondence with the library, they reported that after McTear’s death, his sister donated more than 100 of his books to the library. The catalogue now identifies McTear as a former owner of all of them. That still accounts for less than half of McTear’s collection and I do wonder where more might be found. 

Having started down the McTear rabbit hole, I obviously needed to go to the Linen Hall Library to see his collection. I visited Belfast this past April. Hoyle is well represented with Linen Hall having the largest collection of Hoyle in the UK after only the Bodleian and British Libraries. There were many books of interest besides the first and second editions of Whist. For example, in my essay "A Tale of Two Advertisements," I note an advertisement for an otherwise unrecorded copy of a 1767 Edinburgh reprint of Hoyle's Whist. It is now recorded--McTear had a copy and it was a treat to see it. 

To cap off the year of McTear, I obviously needed to add some of his books to my collection. I managed to find two:  

Penchant (1892)
Levy [2238]

 

 

 

 

McTear invented the card game Penchant which he ascribed to the Bezique family. Of the games McTear invented, it is the only one that seems to have survived to the present day.   

 

 

Abecedary of Basola (1907)
Levy [2232]

 

 

 

 

 

 

McTear invented Basola to remedy what he felt where the imperfections in the German game of skat. 

 

 

 

 

 

I expect I'll have another essay on acquisitions in  2025, the year of McTear.

A 2025 Acquisition and Some Housekeeping

Before I get to the housekeeping, here is a rare little whist booklet that came my way. 

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. 

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
Levy [2199]

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)
Levy [1149]

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)
Levy [2208]

 

Draughts, excerpted from Jones (1808)
Levy [2207]

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)
Levy [2198]

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
Levy [2202]

1860 Bruges imprint
Levy [2203]

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
Levy [2204]

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