Gioachino Greco | The royall game of chesse-play, 1656, first printed edition, Bridgewater Library duplicate

Gioachino Greco

The royall game of chesse-play, sometimes the recreation of the late King with many of the nobility, illustrated with almost an hundred gambits, being the study of Biochimo. London: Henry Herringman, 1656

FIRST EDITION, 8vo (140 x 88 mm), annotations and corrections made in an early-modern hand, engraved frontispiece portrait of Charles I by P. Stent, title within a border of printer's ornaments, one woodcut illustration of a chess board, woodcut initials, poem by Richard Lovelace on A5r, errata K1v, nineteenth-century armorial red morocco gilt, gilt edges, vellum endpapers, inner dentelles, front free endpaper, frontispiece, and preliminary blank loose, repaired closed tear to frontispiece, marginal dampstaining to first quire, A7 slightly shaved, extremities rubbed

FIRST PRINTED EDITION AND FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH, WITH DISTINGUISHED PROVENANCE. A translation of Greco's Trattato del nobilissimo giuoco degli scacchi (see lots 35-36), this was the first work on chess in English to mention that the rook was sometimes depicted as a castle.

PROVENANCE:

George John Thicknesse, 20th Baron Audley (1783–1837), armorial stamp to covers with motto "je te tiens" (British Armorial Bindings Stamp 1); Sir Henry Hucks Gibbs, 1st Baron Aldenham (1819–1907), "Henry H. Gibbs / St. Dunstan's / (1861)" ownership inscription to front free endpaper; Bridgewater Library, "DUPLICATE | Bridgew^r Lib^y" inkstamp to recto of leaf with engraved frontispiece portrait

LITERATURE:

VDL Geschichte I, p. 362; Schachlitteratur 267; Kb 395; Leon 1; Wing G1810; Murray pp. 827-30, 840