GRECO, Gioacchino.
Le jeu des eschets, traduit de l’Italien de Gioachino Greco, Calabrois.
Paris, Jacques Le Febvre, 1689.
12mo, pp. [xxiv], 343, [1], with woodcut printer’s device on title, woodcut headpieces and initials; a very good copy in contemporary French speckled calf, spine gilt; rubbed, endcaps slightly chipped.
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Le jeu des eschets, traduit de l’Italien de Gioachino Greco, Calabrois.
Second edition of this French translation; first published in 1669. The Calabrian master Gioacchino Greco (c. 1600–c. 1634) has been described as ‘the last great player of the “heroic age” … [who] dominated the chess of the period down to the mid-eighteenth century through the posthumous publication of his manuscripts’ (Richard Eales, A history of chess, p. 96). A selection of games from lost manuscripts of the 1620s was published in London in 1656 and entitled The royall Game of Chesse-Play. ‘Another version, published in France 13 years later, was widely translated and appeared in at least 41 editions …. These books owed their popularity to the games which were included; Greco’s openings were mostly those developed by Italian players of the 16th century but he is credited with the invention of the Sicilian wing gambit, a variation of the Falkbeer counter-gambit (3 cxd5 c6), and the From gambit’ (Oxford Companion to Chess).
Provenance: J.W. Rimington-Wilson (1822–1877), with his ownership inscription on front pastedown; R.H. Rimington-Wilson; Bernard Quaritch Catalogue 428 (1929), no. 564.
Van der Linde I, p. 363.
