Contemporary Reviews of Gaming Literature

updated September 6, 2013 with some more information on Cautions. I suspect more will be forthcoming shortly. 

Patrick Spedding is, among other things, the bibliographer of the 18th century novelist Eliza Haywood. On his blog, he shared some contemporary reviews of Haywood's The Wife and The Husband (both 1756) and more. Those posts made me realize that I had a number of contemporary reviews of gaming literature, but never put them together in one place. I do so here, but first, a quick update...

The Scottish Miniature

One of my favorite Hoyles is Dundee.1, the miniature published in Dundee in 1806 that I wrote about in "The Scottish Hoyles (part 2)." I noted there that the "Canadian" copy was on its way to the National Library of Scotland. It has arrived in their catalogue here.

Reviews of Gaming Literature

There were a number of 18th century periodicals that published reviews or notices of nearly everything published in London. The two best know are The Monthly Review (1749-1844) and The Critical Review (1756-1817). They both started after Hoyle began writing, but both reviewed some books on gaming that I have discussed in this blog and one that I have not. These reviews are hugely important as they provide contemporary evidence of book publication and of book reception.

• The Humours of Whist

The Monthly Review for February 1753 (pp143-4) notes a new edition of The Humours of Whist, a satire of Hoyle and of the piracy of his whist treatise. The notice reads:

The polite gamester; or, the humours of whist. A dramatic satire, as acted every day at White's, and other coffee-houses and assemblies. 8vo. 6d. Cooper.

This is a new edition of a pamphlet published a few years ago; it is intended as a satire upon Hoyle, author of the treatises on whist, and other games; and also upon gaming in general.

The review did not discuss Humours as a satire of piracy. Perhaps the piracy was out of mind by 1753.

•  Calculations, Cautions and Observations, by E. Hoyle Jun.

I have never seen a copy of this book; it is not listed in ESTC. There is a copy in the British Library catalogue, shelf mark D-7913.bb.34. My experience with the British Library is that the prefix "D-" means that the book was destroyed in the Second World War. Indeed, I have confirmed that the book has been destroyed. A second copy survives, but is unfortunately not available to the public. We are left with a fair bit of information about the book--a contemporary review and the comments of a number of gaming bibliographers, Cavendish, Marshall, Jessel, and Hargrave (see my essay "Where can I learn more about Hoyle's writing?" for details on their works) who have seen and written about it.

The Critical Review for August 1761 is rather scathing:

Calculations Cautions, and Observations;  relating to the various Games played with Cards: Addressed to the Ladies. By E. Hoyle Jun. 8vo. Pr 1s Griffiths

Had not the younger Mr Hoyle made frequent unsuccessful awkward attempts to be witty and humorous we should pass over his hackney'd admonitions to the ladies, as the well meant counsel of stupidity; but affectation merits serious reprehension. We must therefore acquaint our author, that we can calculate the duration of his literary existence, with as much certainty as ever his predecessor could calculate a game of chances; and we venture to predict as a proof of our infallibility, that he may live just till he happens to be read and no longer. (p159)

Cavendish discusses the book in his article "Historical Notes on our Nation Card Game. Chapter 1" in London Society for January 1866:

A few years later another Hoyle begotten pamphlet made its appearance. It was a moral paper, dissuading from play. It is only interesting on account of its title, which is ingeniously framed so as to obtain admission for the pamphlet into card circles. It was entitled 'Calculations, Cautions, and Observations relating to various Games played with Cards. By Edmond Hoyle, jun.' The writer, under this pseudonym (which was, of course adopted to catch the eye), professed to be Hoyle's nephew. (volume 9, p65)

Similar comments were made by Julian Marshall in "Books on Gaming" in Notes and Queries for February 22, 1890:

At this point I must briefly mention a book which appeared with the following title : "Calculations, | Cautions, | and | Observations ; | Relating to | the various Games | played with | Cards: | Addressed to the Ladies. | By Edmond Hoyle, Jun.," 12mo., London, 1761, pp. 47, including subtitle and title. (B.M. and G.C.) In this there is nothing of our author's writing. It is a pamphlet in which the writer, who professes to be Hoyle's nephew, seeks to dissuade his readers from indulging in play. Of course, it is possible that Hoyle left a nephew...Much more probably "E. Hoyle, Jun." is a pseudonym, adopted with the idea that it would draw attention, as it doubtless did, to this pamphlet, which would have otherwise passed unnoticed. (7th ser. IX, p143)

The abbreviations B.M. and G.C. indicate that Marshall had seen the now-lost copy at the British Museum (now the British Library) and that in the collection of George Clulow. The United States Playing Card Company bought the Clulow collection in about 1900. Hargrave lists the Clulow copy on page 395 of her book A History of Playing Cards. Unfortunately, the UPSCC collection is not open to the public. 

Bibliographer Jessel had clearly seen a copy as he writes in his bibliography:

Probably a pseudonym. The author professes to be a nephew of Hoyles. The book contains a long extract from a Poem on Piquet, which I have been unable to trace. (p150) 

Within gaming literature, there is a sub-genre dealing with the morality of gaming. (See "The Nature of Gaming Literature (part 2)"). Hoyle never addressed the question and it is ironic that someone should exploit his name in doing so.

Although the book is unavailable, we are fortunate to have some much detail about it.

• A New Treatise upon Real Quadrille

In my essay "Piquet and Quadrille Literature" I discuss a number of 18th century works on those card games, including the 1764 work A New Treatise upon Real Quadrille from the French of M. Martin. The Monthly Review for September 1764 gives a long excerpt and favorable notice (pp238-9):

A new Treatise upon real Quadrille, translated into English from the original French of Mons Martin...Small 8vo. 2s. 6d. sewed. Burnet.

The learned Author of this important treatise sets forth, as his motive for offering it to the public, that 'Quadrille, as it is played in England, is so little known in foreign countries, that an Englishman who goes abroad, is entirely ignorant of this game, except it be the value of the cards, their rank and order, and he cannot play it in any other country, so much has it been changed and augmented; from being tedious and languid, it has been rendered lively and amusing, by the additions and improvements it has received. Those who sit down only for amusement, will receive as much pleasure as those who play for profit and advantage.

'As the same taste cannot prevail for any length of time, it is requisite there should be as much variety in our amusements as in our dress. Quadrille fixes its reign in England; it occupies the attention of the Nobility, as well as the subordinate class of Gentry.' It is therefore to satisfy both, that I offer this treatise, which is written for those only who are acquainted with Quadrille after the English manner, who know the fort and foible of the game, and for these it will be necessary for me to enter into such disquisitions as they are unacquainted with; Beginners may have recourse to Mr. Hoyle's principles, I shall only rectify such mistakes as he has fallen into; add what he has omitted; stipulate the payments; being basted; the voles; the different changes the game at Quadrille may undergo; adding to each chapter, hands for and against; that is to say, the manner in which they should be played, either to win or lose them. It would be impossible to describe all the various turns which this game is susceptible of, a volume in folio would not be sufficient to compass such a design. I shall therefore only enter into the most material parts, and practice will render perfect such as would make themselves compleat masters.'

There is no doubt but this treatise will meet with all the encouragement which a work of so much consequence to the sons and daughters of Dissipation deserves; and the ingenious Author may, possibly, in time, become as great a man as the great Mr. Hoyle. To render it still the more fashionable, and the more universally acceptable and useful, it is printed in French and English;—perhaps too, with a particular view of introducing it, as a school-book, into the principal boarding-schools, those especially for the education of young Ladies.

The Knave of Diamonds tries his wily arts,
And wins, O shameful chance! the Queen of Hearts.

• Whist, A Poem in Twelve Cantos

I am much less familiar with The Analytic Review published by the dissident John Johnson. In an appendix to Volume IX for 1791 (pp515-7), there is a review for Whist, A Poem in Twelve Cantos, a book which I discuss in the essay "Eighteenth Century Whist Literature:"

The author of this poem is not destitute of talents, for versifying; and truly he needs them all, when he undertakes to berhime the laws and maxims of the game of whist. The poem opens with an invocation to the spirit of Hoyle, and observations on the invention of cards, in which the writer describes, with some humour, the benefits which mankind have received from it. An agreeable tale of young Moody and his aunts, by whom the game of whist was first invented and practised, prepares the way for a full detail of the laws of whist ; and a long course of rules is laid down respecting memory, judgment, and temper. The poem, when it becomes didactic, is tedious; but it is occasionally enlivened with pleasing fiction, and with reflections, in which the writer, not unsuccessfully, indulges a vein of ironical humour. 

The review quotes some 90+ lines from the poem, then concludes:.

After the amusement this poem has afforded us, we feel ourselves not disinclined to admit the author's own judgment upon his work, when towards the close he lays,

I paused, and what was done with joy reviewed,
And thought it (if I here the truth may tell)
Hit off, upon the whole, exceeding well.

Conclusion

I wish that the reviews were in existence in the early 1740s when Hoyle was producing most of his books. It would have been interesting to see how they were received.

A Research Trip to Cleveland

I'm just back from a week in my home town of Cleveland, Ohio, where I did spent the bulk of my time doing research in the John G. White Chess Collection at the Cleveland Public Library.

[I also spent a lot of time with family and friends, visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and saw a great Indians' win at Progressive Field.] 

White was an attorney, president of the library's board of trustees, and a fanatic and careful collector of chess, checkers, folklore, and orientalia. His books make up the core of Special Collections at the library--the chess collection is the deepest in the world. And of course where there is chess, there is Hoyle.

The staff could not have been more helpful, paging more than a hundred edition of Hoyle for me and suggesting other items I should see. I have not yet assimilated it all, so for now I will discuss a few random items and relate them to my Hoyle research.

Challenges for the Hoyle bibliographer

In the essay "Eighteenth Century Backgammon Literature" I noted that compiling a list of Hoyle's writings is difficult because there are books which reprint his text without attribution:

Reprints of Hoyle such as Chess Made Easy and Back-Gammon present quite a challenge for the Hoyle bibliographer. The works are nowhere identified as his writing, but are clearly derived from it. None of the earlier Hoyle bibliographers (see "Where Can I Learn More about Hoyle's Writing?") have included these works in the Hoyle canon, where clearly they belong. Why didn't Hoyle's name appear on the title page?

Not really a Hoyle
Cleveland Public Library
John White Collection

I saw the other side of this coin in Cleveland.  An 1815 book on draughts (checkers) published in Albany by the author purports to contain "forty games from Hoyle, Payne, and Sturges" and would thus seem to belong in a Hoyle bibliography. Alas, Hoyle never wrote about draughts. Clearly what happened is the author reprinted material from Payne that was reprinted in the 1779 edition of Hoyle's Games Improved, a book I discuss in "The most important Hoyle after Hoyle." Does this belong in a Hoyle bibliography? Why did Hoyle's name appear on the title page?

The Rimington-Wilson chess manuscript

I've written a number of posts on the Rimington-Wilson chess collection and its dispersal first at a 1928 Sotheby's auction and then by the Quaritch firm (see here and here). The most interesting R-W item was a manuscript translation of Vida's 1527 poem Scacchia Ludus (The Game of Chess), believed to be in the hand of Oliver Goldsmith. The essays about the manuscript (here, and more recently here) have been among the most popular on this blog.

John White purchased a number of items from the Rimington-Wilson collection, including a marvelous 1885 hand list of the chess library. [Aside: There is a hand list of R-W's sporting books (hunting, mountaineering, etc.) at the Albert and Shirley Small Library at the University of Virginia.] Below is R-W's description of the "Goldsmith" manuscript from the hand list of chess books:

Rimington-Wilson's description of manuscript Vida translation
Cleveland Public Library
John White Collection

Rimington-Wilson clearly believed the manuscript was penned by Goldsmith!

A rare bookseller's ticket

Wicksteed Ticket
Cleveland Public Library
John White Collection

White had a copy of the prosaic 1826 Hoyle's Games Improved edited by Charles Jones (Jones.11). From the Longman archive (discussed here), we know that 4000 copies were printed and that John Wicksteed owned a 1/72 share of the copyright, entitling him to 55 copies. What makes White's copy special is that it still has the ticket from Wicksteed's bookshop, a rare survival, and one that I felt privileged to see.

The loveliest book...

1768 Chess in Italian
Cleveland Public Library
John White Collection

...was of course a chess item. White owned a copy of the 1768 Italian translation of Hoyle's chess (Chess.It.1), published in Florence. Although rebound, the original printed blue wrappers were bound in, giving a sense of what the book must have looked like as issued. The Florentines made beautiful books.

 

Unusual structures

Most of the Hoyles are in duodecimo (12mo) format, meaning there are 12 leaves (24 pages) to a printed sheet. They are gathered in sections of either 6 or 12. Some late 18th century Hoyles are 18mo, gathered in sixes, resulting in smaller and cheaper books. I saw two books that I believe were printed in 18mo format that were gathered peculiarly.

One, an 1805 edition of Pigott's New Hoyle (discussed here) was gathered in sections of 9 leaves. This seems completely crazy. To make things easy on the binder, you want an even number of leaves in each gathering, so you can fold the leaves and sew the book through the folds. To make gatherings of 9 leaves, the binder folded and sewed 8-leaf gatherings and pasted the 9th leaf in the middle. So much unnecessary work (though a bit less sewing than if the book were gathered in sixes).

I'm not sure how to write the collation formula for the book. Based on what I saw, I'm tempted to write 18^o: π² A²+1 B-N⁹ O⁶ (-O6) P⁶+3. Bowers, in Principles of Bibliographical Description, has a long rant against "odd index figures" beginning on page 225, arguing forcefully that they should not be used. On the other hand, he notes:

There do exist, however, a very few extraordinary books for which it would be acceptable to use odd index numbers when the odd leaves indicate a consistent method of printing a whole book and not simply of an isolated gathering...Jacob Blanck in a recent article on Washington Irving's Salmagundi pamphlets (1807-1808), which often exhibit the initial gathering in 9's and even in 11's, refers to several early nineteenth-centruy books regularly gathered in 9's. (page 228-9)

I'll look for the Blanck article and for now suspect that the 1805 Pigott Hoyle is one of those "few extraordinary books."

Even stranger was an undated 19th century New Pocket Hoyle printed by R. Walwyn in London. It appears to be an 18mo, gathered in sections of 8 leaves, 1 leaf, 8 leaves, and 1 leaf. The collation formula might look something like 18^o:  A² B⁸ C1 D⁸ E1 F⁸ G1 H⁸ I1 K⁸ L1 M⁸ (M8 missing, blank?). Or perhaps Bowers might approve the shorthand 18^o:  A² B-L^8/1 M⁸ (M8 missing, blank?), although that uses another...odd index figure. It's also interesting that the A and M gatherings total 9 leaves as well--likely they were printed together. I couldn't determine the conjugacy of the leaves in the final gathering. 

More Irish Cancels

Until my Cleveland visit, I had never seen a copy of The Polite Gamester, Dublin: printed by James Hoey, 1783 (Polite.1.3). In the essay "Every Cancel Tells a Story, Don't It? (part 1)" I showed that in 1776 Hoey reissued Ewing's 1772 Polite Gamester with canceled title pages. He did that because Ewing had died and he acquired Ewing's unsold stock--the title page would tell customers where they could buy the book. Surprisingly, the 1783 Hoey edition is a second reissue of the 1772 book with a second set of revised title pages. Hoey's motivation for the second reissue is less certain. Clearly he had unsold stock and perhaps he wished to make it look more current with a new date.

Conclusion

What makes a good research trip? Certainly the collection is most important, but a comfortable reading room and supportive staff are also important. I found all three in Special Collections at the Cleveland Public Library. Every chess (and Hoyle) researcher needs to visit the John White collection!

Researching Copyright

Copyright is an important theme throughout this blog. I have used many tools to research the ownership of the Hoyle copyright and have recently "discovered" a new one. This essay will describe the tools giving examples from my research. Some provide a snapshot of ownership at a point in time while others document sales of copyright shares, typically with the price paid, letting us value the copyright at a point in time. Like any historical evidence, there is a random nature to what records have survived and therefore how complete a story can be uncovered.

Stationers' Register

The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers was the guild of the book trade in the City of London. They maintained a register of books where copyright owners could record their right to print a book. Hoyle entered A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist in the register on November 17, 1742 as the sole proprietor. Hoyle and Cogan jointly entered the backgammon treatise on June 28, 1743 and the piquet treatise on January 11, 1744. Hoyle registered Brag on January 18, 1751. [Aside: the latter two years are recorded in the register as 1743 and 1750--the register uses old style dating in which the first day of the new year is March 25.] His other works were not recorded with the Stationers Company.

Stationers' Register entry for Hoyle's Piquet

Imprint

The imprint of a book frequently provides reliable data on copyright ownership. For example, the first edition of Whist had the imprint "printed by John Watts for the author" and the first collected edition of Hoyle's Games was "printed for T. Osborne." Imprints, however, can be fictitious, as was the case with the 1743 piracies of Whist, and for many of the books published by Francis Cogan. The imprint provides a coarse view of copyright ownership--a book may remain in print for many years during which time the copyright ownership can change. Sometimes, booksellers would go to the expense of reissuing books with new title pages to update the imprint (for examples, see the discussion of The Compleat Gamester, Quadrille and Piquet, and The Polite Gamester), but often the book would continue to sell with the old imprint.

Publishers Records

Infrequently, at least for the time period I care about, publisher's business records may survive providing evidence of copyright ownership. The essay "Hoyle's Games Improved, Charles Jones (1800)" used business records of the Longman firm to identify the owners and their shares of the copyright for an 1800 Hoyle. At the end of this piece, I will take a second look at that essay and the editions of 1796 and 1800.

Bookseller Trade Sales

Throughout the 18th century, London booksellers would hold frequent sales of copyrights and physical books. We are extremely fortunate that so many long runs of these sale catalogues have survived. Better still, they tend to be annotated with information about the purchaser and purchase price. I have discussed these trade sales a number of times--the essay "The Hoyle Copyright in Hoyle's Lifetime" is a good example with some illustrations from the catalogues. Most of the Hoyle sales are for a fractional share of a copyright, providing only transactional information. For example the above essay notes that on April 21, 1763, Henry Woodfall bought two one-sixth shares of Hoyle. Other sources are required to find who owned the rest. When the trade sale offers the full share, the catalogue can provide a complete snapshot of ownership.

Receipts

In my discussion of the 1779 Jones Hoyle, I cited a receipt where bookseller Thomas Payne sold the rights to a book on draughts (checkers) to Thomas Lowndes for inclusion into Hoyle's Games Improved. Similar receipts survive for copyrights sold at bookseller trade sales. For example Lowndes bought a 1/12 interest in Hoyle from a member of the Baldwin family for £22 15s on February 5, 1771. The receipt is useful because if the catalogue for that trade sale survives, I have not located a copy.

Advertisements

Newspaper advertisements for books typically include imprint-like information so that the customer can learn where to purchase the book. It had not occurred to me until quite recently to compare advertisements with the imprints of books they advertise. When copyright ownership changes while a book is still in print, it is possible to detect the change in advertisements even if the book was not reissued with a cancel title. This provides a less coarse view of copyright ownership than imprints.

"tenth" edition
printed for Osborne

An interesting example is the "tenth" edition of Hoyle's Games printed for Thomas Osborne, a book which I discuss in "Reissues of Mr. Hoyle's Treatises (1748-1755)." The book was first published in 1748 as an "eighth" edition and reissued by Osborne as a "tenth" in 1750 (pictured at left), remaining in print through 1755.

December 24, 1755
The Public Advertiser

Some advertisements from December 1755 such as the one pictured at left offer the "tenth" edition printed for T. Osborne, J. Hodges, and R. Baldwin. There are no copies of the "tenth" with Hodges or Baldwin on the imprint.

"eleventh" edition printed for
Osborne, Hodges, and Baldwin

When the "eleventh" edition was published in December 1756, the imprint did include Osborne, Hodges, and Baldwin.



What we learn from the advertisements is that Hodges and Baldwin invested in the Hoyle copyright at least a year earlier than one can infer from the imprints.

A second example applies to the Charles Jones Hoyles. In my essay "Hoyle's Games Improved, Charles Jones (1800)," I noted that Longman was not on the imprint of the 1796 edition, was in 1800. Because the Longman business records survive, we have much financial detail about the 1800 Hoyle. It turns out that advertisements from December 1798 mention the Longman firm, so they must have purchased a share of the Hoyle copyright two years before the 1800 edition was published.

Those advertisements sent me back to the Longman archives, looking for more details about the 1796 edition. I found that Longman owned a 1/24 share of the Hoyle copyright, although the records did not list the other owners and their shares. The records indicate a print run of 3000 copies, which at the sale price of 3s. 6d. meant £525 in revenue. Expenses totalled £125, primarly paper (a bit more than £70), printing (£28 12s.), and advertising (almost £21).

So, I've discovered that newspaper advertisements can identify changes in copyright ownership that are more fine-grained than imprints. This is not a terribly profound discovery, I suppose, but it gives me another tool to explore the Hoyle copyright. I have nearly 500 advertisements for Hoyles and wish myself happy digging!

Second Anniversary: Continuities and Disruptions

Today marks the second anniversary of my Hoyle blog. As you will see below, the title does not refer to the blog! Some quick data on the past two years before I clarify the title:

• This is essay number 89 and if they average approximately 750 words, I have written in excess of 65,000 words or more than 200 pages worth of text.
• My pace has slowed from the first year in which I wrote 64 posts, slightly more than one a week. The 25 that have been written average to a post every fortnight.
• Total page views will reach 18,000 today, most of which are from serious readers, though some are marketers trying to make money from my work.
• The most popular posts are those that I have linked to on mailing lists or bulletin boards. Three of the top five provided background for queries I posted to the Exlibris listserv. Two of these concerned the Rimington-Wilson Library ("The J. W. Rimington-Wilson Library (part 1)" and "More on Rimington-Wilson's Chess Manuscript ") and one asked about a seeming inconsistency in the ownership of the Hoyle copyright, with the group's received wisdom summarized here. Number three in terms of popularity was “Eighteenth Century Backgammon Literature” which I shared on the backgammon forum BGOnline. That essay will be reprinted next month in a British Backgammon periodical. 

My future plans for the blog revolve around my other publishing ambitions. I have a second journal article that has been stuck at 60% completion for more than a year. I have a research trip planned next month that I expect to provide the information that will enable its completion. I have thoughts for another journal article or two.

My longer-term dream is to write a book about Hoyle. I originally conceived of the book as a descriptive bibliography of editions of Hoyle through 1800, with essays on topics in bibliography and book history that arise in the study of the Hoyle canon. Many of the essays were to be based on work originally published in this blog.

As I have started to outline and write sections of the book, I find myself considering major changes in both its scope and organization. The insight that is leading me to change is this:

Hoyle was published from 1742 to 1865 as a relatively continuous and hugely successful business enterprise centered in London. The enterprise was built on Hoyle as a brand, rather than Hoyle as an author.

This insight is recent. The continuity is easy to miss when confronted by the roughly 200 18th century books that could be considered editions of Hoyle (by including his writing, or by using his name as author or in the title). Carry on to 1850 and there are another 150 candidates with more beyond. The continuity is also easy to miss when one focuses on the text of Hoyle. Hoyle's last writing was in 1763. Other editors and writers added so frequently to the text that Hoyle's contribution is barely discernible, yet titles such as The New Hoyle, Hoyle Abridged, or Hoyle Made Familiar abound.

The continuity is more apparent when one focuses on the 75 books that make up the mainstream of Hoyle. These fall neatly into three groups, linked by the booksellers that published them:

• First are the 45 authorized books consisting entirely of writing by Hoyle, published through 1775. The copyright was owned first by Hoyle, then by Francis Cogan (see "Bibliography of the Cogan Hoyles"), and then Thomas Osborne (see for example "The First Osborne Hoyles", "The Osborne Collections of Hoyle ", "Mr. Hoyle's Treatises", and "Reissues of Mr. Hoyle's Treatises "). Upon Osborne's death in 1767, a group of assignees headed by Richard Baldwin continued to publish Hoyle.


• In the aftermath of Becket vs. Donaldson, Hoyle was in the public domain and a number of competing versions came out. Swift action and shrewd marketing allowed Baldwin and others (notably the Longman firm) to maintain market dominance with Hoyle’s Games Improved. The book, edited by Charles Jones, still contained much of Hoyle’s writing, but each of its 11 editions (and a greater number of separate issues) through 1826, added new games and new authors. See for example "The Most Important Hoyle after Hoyle", and "Hoyle's Games Improved, Charles Jones (1800)".


• Longman and others brought out six editions of Hoyle’s Games Improved and Enlarged from 1835 to 1865, edited by someone known only by the initials G. H. I have not discussed the book in this blog. The textual link to Hoyle becomes further attenuated, even as his name stays in the title. Yet crucially, the publishers remain the same and the books are dominant in the London market, despite substantial competition.

One sees, through these 75 books, the building of a Hoyle brand by Cogan, Osborne, Baldwin, and Longman. And I'm seeing my bibliography less as an author bibliography of Edmond Hoyle and more as a business bibliography--the development of the Hoyle brand.

The remaining Hoyles, perhaps 300 in the years 1742 to 1865 are of mixed significance. Some were quite disruptive, requiring a response from the mainstream publishers if they were to maintain leadership. The disruptions include the piracies of 1743, the proliferation of competitors with the end of perpetual copyright in 1774, and novel new series such as The New Pocket Hoyle in 1802. The main publishers of Hoyle withstood these disruptions and more, and their responses are evident in the text, the physical books, and their marketing.

There were other publications of Hoyle’s work that did not disrupt the main enterprise. Obvious candidates include reprints of Hoyle in Ireland (which had its own continuities and disruptions), reprints in America, and translations on the Continent. None of these efforts competed significantly with London, nor did they require a response from the London publishers. Equally inconsequential to London were one-time piracies and one-off editions (such as the Brambles edition, described here) that did not pose a serious marketing threat.

I am now thinking that I want to organize both the bibliography and the essays around the theme of business continuities and disruptions in the creation of the Hoyle brand. The implication is that the bibliography won’t be organized in a typical fashion. Many bibliographies are arranged as a strict chronology. Others are organized by title, and within title, different editions and issues are organized chronologically. The former approach seems appropriate for a bibliography for a printing house or publisher. The latter is typical for an author bibliography and is useful as a precursor to textual and literary criticism. I can’t really imagine anyone interested in producing a critical edition of Hoyle, nor engaging in literary criticism—neither of those reflects what is important about Hoyle.

What would a bibliography organized around the Hoyle brand look like? The first major section would discuss the mainstream effort from 1742 to 1865. The second section would be the 1743 piracies which were hugely disruptive and greatly affected the evolution of the Hoyle product and its marketing. Next would be the disruptions brought about with the competition in the wake of Beckett v Donaldson, and so on. Separate sections would be the Dublin and American reprints which were neither part of the continuous main narrative, nor did they disrupt it.

A consequence of this organization is that editions of a single work would be spread across multiple sections. For example the authorized London editions of A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist would appear in the main section, the important “Webster” and “Webb” editions in a section on the 1743 piracies, and the Irish reprints of Whist in a third section. This might make it difficult to follow the transmission of the text, but I expect that judicious notes and appendices would provide connections that otherwise might be lost.

A second consequence is that my original plan to stop at the artificial date of 1800 does not make sense. Many of the publishing efforts--the mainline work of Baldwin and Longman, the infuriating chapbooks by Robert Withy, and the competition from Pigott--straddle that year. Going beyond 1800 introduces a lot of one-off works such as the miniature published in Dundee, that are neither continuities nor disruptions.

A third consequence is that the essays will tie more closely to the sections of the descriptive bibliography. For example, I’ve written a great deal in this blog about the Dublin reprints. Both that writing and the books it describes are logically separable from everything else. Clarity would be lost if the descriptive bibliography mixed the Dublin reprints with the underlying London texts.

In his landmark Principles of Bibliographical Description, Fredson Bowers writes that every bibliography “should have a unified subject, a definite purpose expressed in its arrangement and in its treatment of the books described so that a shaping intelligence guides the work.” (page 18). I’m coming to the conclusion that while my unified subject is Hoyle, the nature of the material is not suited to the format of a typical author bibliography. What seems to connect the books is that evolution of the Hoyle product and brand in the face of stringent competition. I’ve never seen a bibliography organized the way I am proposing, yet it seems to be the best way to rationalize an extremely complex series of books.

Lastly, do not fear that what I'm contemplating is no longer descriptive bibliography. The marketing battles left numerous fascinating traces in the physical books.

I’d be anxious to hear from anyone who has thoughts about my proposal.

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.

Hoyles at the Clark

It's been more than a month since my April Fool's prank which caught several of you who should know better.  Since then I've been pretty silent. I have three essays in the pipeline with more details about the Webster piracy, but they are technical and will take more time to make comprehensible. Plus, I've been traveling. Since the travel included research visits to a couple of libraries, I thought I'd report on some of the more interesting books I saw.

First, I visited the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA. The grounds, building, and collections are all spectacular. The staff could not have been more helpful. I had a chance to look at eight 18th century editions of Hoyle, some of which are quite unusual.

Piquet.1.2
Clark Library copy

Most interesting was A Short Treatise on the Game of Piquet, printed for T. Osborne, 1745. As I discuss in the essay on the first Osborne Hoyles, Thomas Osborne bought the Hoyle copyright from struggling bookseller Francis Cogan in 1745. The purchase must have included unsold copies of some of the books as well, because Osborne reissued the Cogan editions of Piquet and Quadrille with cancel title pages. Osborne sold the treatises both individually, but more frequently as collections bound with other treatises.

The Quadrille reissues are fairly common--I've seen eight copies and know of several others. The reissue of Piquet is quite scarce, with only four copies known. The copies at the Bodleian, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the American Contract Bridge League are bound with Whist, the Osborne reissue of Cogan's Quadrille, and Backgammon.The copy at the Clark is the only survivor that appears to have been issued individually.

I wish that Piquet had survived in its original binding. Cogan likely sold it in Dutch paper wrappers, an example of which can be seen online in the digital collections of the Beinecke Library at Yale. I suppose that Cogan did not go to the expense of putting on the decorative paper of his entire inventory, but only when the book was displayed in his shop for sale. Osborne, on the other hand, sold the Hoyles in drab blue wrappers, such as the one pictured here. How was the reissue sold? Was it originally in Dutch paper wrappers? Would Osborne have removed them? We'll probably never know.

Whist. Webb piracy
Levy [1534]

The current binding of Piquet at the Clark is a delightful surprise--one that is quite familiar to me. I have an equally rare and identically bound copy of a piracy of Whist, printed for W. Webb, 1742 (although both the name Webb and the date 1742 are fictitious). And I do mean identical--the cloth, the leather, the red label, the lettering, and even the brass ornament are the same in both. Compare the details of the spines below. The color difference are in part an artifact of photography and in part due to the better preservation of Piquet. 

Piquet. Osborne reissue. Clark Library copy

Whist. Webb piracy

Both books contain a stamp indicating that they were bound by Bayntun (Riviere) of Bath England.

Whist. Webb piracy. Binder's stamp.

The names Riviere and Bayntun will be familiar to anyone familiar with rare books. Robert Riviere (1808-82) was a fine London bookbinder. George Bayntun (1873-1940) was a bookseller and binder in Bath. The Baytun family continues to operate a bookshop in central Bath as well as the Bayntun-Riviere bindery.

How did two identical bindings come to be and how did they end up in different collections? I purchased Whist at auction in 2004. It bears the bookplate of William Tarun Fehsenfeld, a Baltimore antiques dealer who died in 1995. The Clark acquired Piquet in 1970 from the Nottingham bookseller Ian H. R. Cowley. It is probable, then, that Baytun bound both books some time before 1970, perhaps for the Nottingham dealer, or perhaps for a collector. I can't help but wonder if other books--other Hoyles?--might have been bound at the same time. I'll get in touch with Baytun and see if they might have records to fill in more details.

Seeing Piquet was the highlight of my visit to the Clark. There were some other notable items:

• An Osborne collection of Hoyle, as discussed here. The Clark copy consists of Whist.6, BG.2, Quad.2, and Piquet.2 with each of the individual treatises autographed by Hoyle. It may have once contained a copy of the Laws of Whist. The impressions left on remaining pages were not as convincing as those pictured here. If the Laws were present, the book would fit perfectly in the third group of Osborne collections. 
• One of three surviving copies of Games.1.4, a reissue of Hoyle's treatises discussed here. The others are at the Bodleian and Vanderbilt. 
• A French translation of Whist dated 1765 that I had never seen before. It does not have a place of publication or a publisher, so more work is required to learn more about it. 

It was a delightful visit to The Clark. The next day I went on to the UCLA campus and visited Special Collections. They had many issues of The Covent Garden Magazine, which I will discuss in a future essay.

The Hoyle Manuscript

Updated: April 2, 2013. Well, I got a few of you with this April Fool's Day post. Everything up to and including the two letters from the 1750s is accurate (though I believe the letters to be satiric) and everything after is the product of my imagination. I'm still looking for a copy of the Hoyle manuscript. There's no fool like an April fool!

I had always thought that the essay "An Insomniac's Reward" would be the most dramatic story of an addition to my collection, the rare Laws of Whist Designed for Framing. I think you will find this story of the Hoyle manuscript even more astonishing!

I have discussed the first edition of Hoyle's first book, A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist, many times on these pages. See, for example, the essay "A Discovery at the Morgan Library." Internal evidence in Whist makes it is clear that Hoyle circulated a earlier manuscript version of that work among his whist students. The awkward title to Chapter XIV is:

Some purchasers of the treatise in manuscript, disposed of the last winter, having desired a further explanation concerning the playing of sequences, they are explained in the following manner. (page 74)

Hoyle goes on to give 13 pages of explanation of sequences and other miscellaneous topics. The first edition was published in November 1742, so "last winter" must refer to the winter of 1741-2.

The book opens with another hint about what must have been the contents of the manuscript:

The author of this treatise did promise, if it met with approbation, to make an addition to it by way of appendix, which he has done accordingly. (page 1)

At the bottom of page 46 is the comment "What follows in this treatise is the addition promised." The inference is that the manuscript consisted of roughly the first 46 pages of the 86 page first edition.

No copies of the manuscript are known to survive. I've been looking without success for a copy for decades in institutional collections, in private collections, and in dealer catalogues. Several years ago I began to undertake a different approach. There are two letters published in contemporary periodicals from students of Hoyle. Perhaps they had copies that could be tracked down?

An anonymous letter published in The Rambler of May 8, 1750 reads:

Papa made me drudge at whist 'till I was tired of it; and far from wanting a head, Mr Hoyle, when he had not given me above forty lessons, said I was one of his best scholars.

Alas, the anonymity makes it impossible to track down the author.

More promising is The London Daily Advertiser and Literary Gazette of September 16, 1751, where "Draperia" writes:

Be sure, sir, to insist particularly on my skill at whist: I have had the honour to be taught that noble game by Mr. Hoyle himself, and not even Lady Lurchwell knows how many cards are out, so well as I do.

Updated April 2, 2013. Everything above is factual. Everything below is fanciful.

I had thought the pseudonym Draperia to be a dead end until I discovered an unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Key to the Literary Gazette (Amherst: University of Massachusetts 1992), which relied on archival records of the publisher N. Jackson to identify many of the otherwise-unknown authors.

It turns out that Draperia is one Alice Browne. That name started me on a long course of research, which I present here in much abbreviated form. Browne, the daughter of prosperous London draper George Browne, must have fashioned her pseudonym from her father's profession. George Browne took on Daniel Mead (sometimes spelled Meade) as an apprentice in the early 1740s, and, as happens not infrequently, Mead married his master's daughter in the early 1750s. Mead carried on as a successful merchant, as did Alice and Daniel's son (also Daniel) and grandson (Henry Meade). Henry left London with his merchant profits to start a textile factory in Lancashire in the 1790s, one of the earliest to bring steam power (a modified Newcomen engine) to textile manufacturing.

Henry Meade and his sons were hugely successful, first with wool and later cotton. They were major employers near the town of Preston, and eventually built a country home, Meade Manor, to the north. The genealogical and probate records become a bit unclear from the turn of the 19th century and I haven't had a chance to research the land records. From what I can gather, it appears that Meade Manor and the surrounding lands stayed in the family until the 20th century. Before World War I, the family was forced to sell parcel after parcel of the surrounding land to keep up the home. The last of the Meades apparently died in the war and the property was boarded up and abandoned.

Somehow, the property managed to avoid demolition and in 2007, a developer gained approval from the county and from taxing authorities to turn the home into privates flats. I was hopeful that the property would then be opened and the contents could be checked for a Hoyle manuscript that Alice Browne might have owned. Alas, the credit crisis delayed the project for years and only in 2012 was the developer to obtain financing.

I contacted the developer to learn that there was a large volume of "not particularly interesting" furniture and family possessions in the home. The developer engaged a Lancashire auction house to sell the contents. Their plan was to hold a series of auctions, first the furniture, then the books, and then the rest of the contents. The furniture sale was in January, followed by a poorly catalogued book and art sale in February. Unable to determine from the descriptions (such as "lot of 19th century literature") whether a Hoyle manuscript might be present, I engaged Paul, a student at nearby Lancaster University to attend the pre-sale. Alas, no Hoyle, and indeed, no gaming books whatsoever turned up.

The third sale of "household" contents was scheduled for March and even more poorly catalogued, really little more than a series of cartons. But some lots were apparently writings ("carton of gamekeeper journals" or "carton of household records"). With the barest possibility of locating a manuscript, I asked Paul to return to the pre-sale and, gulp, look through the 150 odd cartons.

And, THERE IT WAS, in carton 47 ("carton of 19th century correspondence") was a copy of the Hoyle manuscript. The auction was not until the next day and frankly, I was a wreck. Paul was able to represent me at the auction and I gave him a huge bidding limit, the promise of a major bonus if successful, and swore him to silence until the auction was over.

The auction itself was a non-event. We were successful at £37.50!!!! The manuscript is on its way to California. I guess I'll remain a wreck until it arrives.

Paul says that judging from Hoyle autographs I shared with him, the manuscript is not in Hoyle's hand--Hoyle must have hired a scrivener. There is an intriguing inscription, however, that does appear to be in Hoyle's hand: "To Alice, my finest and fairest pupil, Edmond." Rather forward for the mid-18th century, don't you think?

More when this treasure arrives safely!