Holye's Games Improved

Hoyle’s games improved; being practical treatises on whist, quadrille, piquet, chess, back-gammon, draughts, cricket, Tennis, Quinze, Hazard, Lansquenet, and Billiards. In which are also contained, the method of betting at those games upon equal or advantageous Terms; including the laws of each, as settled and agreed to at White’s and Stapleton’s Choclate-houses, the Star and Garter, &c Revised and corrected by Charles Jones, Esq. A new edition enlarged.

Hoyle’s treatises on individual games - he was known particularly for his work on the rules and play of card games - were collected in 1748; some half a dozen further editions were published in his lifetime, but his authority extended for generations after his death in 1769. 

ESTC records other editions of ‘Hoyle’s Games Improved’ published by substantially the same group (who clearly shared the rights to a lucrative work) in 1775, 1779 and 1790. There are minor changes to the title-page, suggesting that the text was regularly revised.

Condition & Materials

12mo. pp. vi, 306 + engraved plate (illustrating ‘fortification billiards’). Some spotting and browning, particularly to the title and final page (offsetting from turn-ins of an older binding). Modern sheep, with gilt-ruled spine. John Dew’s section on billiards was also issued separately.

References

ESTC T87525.