Lot 78
Lewis, William
Oriental Chess, or Specimens of Hindoostanee Excellence in that Celebrated Game
Auction: Books & Manuscripts | 01 October 2026 from 10am | Lots 1 to 78
Description
exhibited in more than Seventy Situations, originally published in India, and Remarkable for their Unparalleled Skill and Ingenuity. London: J. M. Richardson, 1817. First edition, 2 volumes, square 12mo in half-sheets (12 x 10.8cm), contemporary half calf, marbled sides, ix [153], 141 [5] pp., half-title to each volume, errata leaf and advertisement leaf to rear of volume 2, woodcut diagrams throughout volume 2
Provenance
From the library of the Edinburgh Chess Club (with their gilt supralibros to covers, gilt shelfmarks to spines, and labels to front pastedowns).
Footnote
The very rare first book by the prolific 19th-century chess writer, who during the 1820s was a participant on the London side in the famous correspondence match with the Edinburgh Chess Club, from whose library the present copy derives. Three copies traced in libraries world-wide, at the British Library, University of Cambridge, and New York Public Library. In the preface Lewis explains that a large proportion of the situations depicted are from a treatise written in Sanskrit, which he does not name.