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 new 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.