Copyright
A detailed and readable account of the game, well illustrated, and with an analysis of Belinda's Game from Pope's The Rape of the Lock
"A history of the pack and explanations of its many secrets". Ward, Lock; Reprinted by Spring Books, London, 1953.
Translated as "The book on games of chance" by Sydney H. Gould (New York 1953). Basically a manual on gambling, written by a 63-year old scholar and former playboy, this is the earliest example of a book containing more or less intelligible rules of play for any card games, specifically Primero and Trappola.
In full, "Card Essays, Clay's Decisions, and Card-Table Talk". Essay titles: Whist versus Chess, On the Morality of Card-playing, On the Origin and Development of Cards and Card Games, On the Etymology of Whist, Duties on Playing-Cards, Molière on Piquet, The Duffer's Whist Maxims.
Cavendish on Piquet (London 1896)
In full, "The Laws of Piquet adopted by the Portland and Turf Clubs, with a Treatise on the Game". My copy (1896) is the ninth edition; the first was privately printed in 1873.
A fascinating read, for its time. The title speaks for itself.
Sub-titled "The English Parnassus", and amounting, in effect, to a sort of Idler's Vademecum, this is the earliest English book to contain detailed descriptions of various card games, and then only in the second edition. (The first appeared in 1652.) The section devoted to "Games and sports now used this day among the gentry of England" contains the following entries: "the Noble Spanish Game of l'Ombre, the Ingenious Game of Picquet" (cribbed from an English translation of a French book), "the Gentile [sic] Game of Cribbidge, the Princely Game of Chesse". (These are followed by an article entitled "How to Cure Corns".)
The first English book devoted entirely to games and sports was published anonymously and later ascribed to Cotton, who had in fact a few years earlier produced an expanded edition of Izaak Walton's celebrated Compleat Angler, on which the Gamester is obviously based. The chapters on Ombre, Piquet, Cribbidge and Chess are lifted almost bodily from Cotgrave, but the others appear to be more original. I have worked from (a) a facsimile of Samuel Pepys's personal copy of the 1676 edition [Pepys, 714], with annotations in the diarist's handwriting, published in 1972 by Cornmarket Reprints, London (ISBN 0 7191 1486 1), and (b) a reprint forming Part I of Games and Gamesters of the Restoration', London, 1930, of which Part II is Lives of the Gamesters by Theophilus Lucas.
A web site containing much useful information on period games, including reconstructions, transcriptions of sources and images, bibliographies, FAQs, links to vendors of period games and materials, and related matters.
Most of the first half of this pioneering work is devoted to the history and development of cards and card games in general, as background to the more specific study of Tarot games themselves. The second half has since been superseded by Dummett and McLeod: A History of Games played with the Tarot Pack (Edwin Mellen Press, 2004).
"A History of Playing Cards and a Bibliography of Games and Gaming". Mine is the Dover (New York) reprint of 1966. The Bibliography is invaluable.
(Vol 2, ed Jeayes, Roxburgh Club, 1905) (BM C.101.h.2) Contains brief and inadequate descriptions of: Picket, Gleke, Cribbidge, Ruffe & Honors and Whisk, Bone Ace, Put and the High Game, Lanterloo, Noddy and Cribbidge-Noddy, Penneech, Post and Pair - all mostly cribbed from Cotton, though with one or two additional comments of interest, and a list of other card games.
My copy is 1847, but Hargrave lists an earlier G.- H.- edition of 1835
The most comprehensive and only authoritative web site for all rules of card games and associated material.
Most of the contents of Historic Card Games are revisions and adaptations of passages in this title. First published 1990 as The Oxford Guide to Card Games (hardback), later (with corrections but no illustrations) in paperback as A History of Card Games (1991).
Contains Whist (Pole), Solo Whist (F Green), Piquet, Ecarté, Euchre, Bézique, Cribbage (by "Berkeley"), and half a dozen round games, including Spoil Five, by "Baxter-Wray".
Rabelais' rewrite of an existing story called The Great and Inestimable Chronicles of the Grand and Enormous Giant Gargantua (1532) includes a list of some 195 games played by his eponymous hero, of which the first 35 are, where identifiable, all card games. They include Prime (Primero), Triomphe, Cent (Piquet), Thirty-One, Cuckoo, Glic, and "Coquinbert, qui gaigne perd" ("he who wins, loses"). A subsequent German-language version entitled Geschichtklitterung ("History-Twistery"), by the Alsatian writer Gottfried Fischart, expanded the gaming list to over 600 items by the time of its third edition in 1590.
"Being a historical, critical and practical Treatise of that Admired Game": a detailed, authoritative and fluent work, if a trifle pedantic.
The complete text has been digitised by Google.
"With Anecdotes of their use in Conjuring, Fortune-Telling and Card-Sharping". Based on a translation of Boiteau d'Ambly, Les cartes à jouer et la cartomancie (1854), but with substantial contributions by others, the whole edited by Taylor. My copy is a 1973 reprint by Tuttle of Tokyo. It is an enjoyable and to some extent informative book, if used with all due critical caution; but the republication in 1973 of something over a century out of date has had the unfortunate effect of misleading the unwary, especially journalists and occultists, into perpetuating notions of the subject that have since been discredited.
Taylor's Motto (1621) John Taylor (1580-1654)was a Thames ferryman who wrote large quantities of doggerel verse of more interest to social historians than to students of literature. His Motto includes a wonderful list of popular board and card games of the time in the following passage:
The prodigalls estate like to a flux,
The Mercer, Draper and the Silkman sucks.
At Irish, Tick-Tacke, Doublets, Draughts, or Chesse,
He flings his money free with carelessnesse.
At Novum, Mumchance, Mischance (chuse ye which),
At one-and thirty, or at Poor-and-rich,
Ruffe, Slam, Trump, Noddy, Whisk, Hole, Sant, New-cut.
Unto the keeping of four Knaves he'll put
His whole estate; at Loadum or at Gleeke,
At Tickle-me-quickly, he's a merry Greeke;
At Primifisto, Post-and-payre, Primero,
Maw, Whip-her-ginny, he's a lib'ral hero;
At My-sow-pigg'd: but (reader, never doubt ye)
He's skill'd in all games, except Look about ye...
And thus the Prodigall, himself alone,
Gives sucke to thousands, and himself sucks none
Francis Willughby's Book of Games (2003)
(Plaies = games for playing, not plays for performing.) Manuscript of the Middleton Collection, Hallward Library, University of Nottingham. A redaction by Jeff Forgeng, Dorothy Johnston, and David Cram was published in October 2003 by Ashgate Press under the title Francis Willughby's Book of Games" (ISBN 1 85928 460 4).
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