“Le Jeu du Trictrac et Jeu des Échecs” [Théodore Legras, 1757] Backgammon, Chess

ANONYMOUS. Le Jeu du Trictrac, comme on le joue aujourd’hui; suivi du Jeu des Échecs. Paris:

Théodore Legras, 1757. 12mo. 370 pp. Continuous pagination throughout. With five in-text engraved diagrams illustrating trictrac play. Contemporary mottled calf, gilt-decorated spine, marbled endpapers, marbled edges; binding worn with rubbing and loss to spine ends, joints holding. Lacking pp. 9–16 (one early gathering), affecting preliminary text only; no loss to engraved diagrams or to the chess section. Good.

An instructional manual devoted first to trictrac, the principal French table game of the 17th and 18th centuries and a direct ancestor of modern backgammon, followed by a substantial section on chess. The two games were commonly regarded as the leading intellectual games of polite society, and are here presented as a single, integrated publication, as evidenced by continuous pagination and uniform typography. The engraved diagrams are integral to the text and illustrate standard board positions discussed in the trictrac section.