by David Levy
updated May 14, 2012
Copyright © 2011-2 by David Levy. All rights reserved.
Welcome to the Edmond Hoyle Home Page!
Edmond Hoyle (1679-1769) was the first English writer on the rules and strategy of popular games. He wrote about whist, backgammon, piquet, chess, quadrille and brag, as well as a book about probability.
I have been studying the writings of Edmond Hoyle over the past several years with the intention of publishing a descriptive bibliography of his works through 1800.
At long last, I have updated the Wikipedia page for Hoyle. There is much more to do, but I've eliminated a lot of the erroneous information and set out an accurate history of his publications. Good biographical information about Hoyle is quite scarce. Much of what is published is wrong. For a good example of how bad information is created and propagated, see this essay.
I'd be anxious to hear from other Hoyle collectors and researchers.
"Pirates, Autographs, and a Bankruptcy: A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist by Edmond Hoyle, Gentleman" in Script & Print, 34 no. 3 (2010): 133-61.
Abstract: Edmond Hoyle wrote and published A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist (1742), the first instructional, analytic book about any card game. After first edition went out of print, Hoyle sold the rights to bookseller Francis Cogan. While Cogan was preparing a second edition, two printers produced pirated versions. The two-month battle between Cogan and the pirates included marketing campaigns, expanded versions of the work, and litigation. The story of piracy is here told for the first time using clues from the physical books, contemporary newspaper advertisements, and archival records. We are left with books with unusual bibliographical features, the most famous of which is the autograph signature of Hoyle in all authorized copies. The paper concludes with a descriptive bibliography of the versions of A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist published between 1742 and 1744.
With the kind permission of Script and Print, I can offer the journal cover, my article, and the appendices.
Edmond Hoyle, Gent. is my blog with bibliographical and other musings about the writings of Edmond Hoyle amd other gaming literature. I have been publishing short essays each Monday and Thursday, but expect to cut back to Mondays only through the end of the year. Here I list the essays by category, rather than in the order I wrote them, as they appear on the blog.
Gaming Literature before Hoyle
Work published during his lifetime
Satiric references to Hoyle
Work published after Hoyle's death
Other Hoyle collectibles
Biographical information
Gaming Literature
On Bibliography
