L'Excellent Jeu du Triquetrac. Tres-doux esbat és Nobles Compagnies

[JOLLIVET, Euverte de], sieur de Votilley. L'Excellent Iev dv Triqvetrac. Tres-dovx esbat és Nobles Compagnies.
Paris: Pierre Guillemot, 1635.

Octavo (172 x 116 mm). (4) ff., 86 pp., (1) f.
Full stiff vellum, two labels on spine (contemporary binding).

Extremely rare second edition, published one year after the equally rare first edition of 1634, from the same bookseller.
This is the first printed treatise on trictrac.

A lawyer at the Parlement de Paris, Jollivet (1601-1662) undertook to set down in writing rules that had until then been transmitted only by custom. He discusses the name of the game, its antiquity and origin, the composition of the board and dice, and then the rules.

On the origin of the word, he suggests an onomatopoeia (the sound of the pieces being moved) and invites the reader to be satisfied with this, the subject being a game rather than a science. Chess book collectors will find the game mentioned on pages 7, 9 and 14.

Eight further editions followed until the end of the century, before new treatises superseded it.

Browning to the interior, some stains, occasionally pronounced.
From the library of Lothar Schmid; his ex-libris.

Zollinger, M., Bibliographie der Spielbücher, n° 84.