Benjamin Franklin | Chess Made Easy, 1797, first edition

Benjamin Franklin

Chess made easy: New and comprehensive rules for playing the game of chess. London: printed for H.D. Symonds, 1797

FIRST EDITION, 12mo (155 x 91 mm), engraving of a chess board bound before title-page, publisher's wrappers bound in, modern calf, minor adhesive residue to title, gatherings mounted on guards, last few leaves frayed at edges, spotting and dampstaining

"The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement... For life is a kind of chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effects of prudence or the want of it."

The American Founding Father and polymath Benjamin Franklin was a lifelong avid chess player, and indeed is believed to have been among the very first Americans to play the game. Chess Made Easy features his important essay "The Morals of Chess", first published in the Columbian Magazine in December 1786, in which Franklin outlines the history of the game and draws sustained comparisons between the art of chess and good conduct in life. According to Franklin, chess hones the player's faculties of foresight, circumspection, caution, and perseverance. ESTC lists two subsequent London editions (published 1798 and 1800 respectively), followed by an 1802 Philadelphia edition (see next lot).

For an autograph letter signed by Franklin, see lot 100.

PROVENANCE:

M.C.T. Sturman, ownership inscription dated 1846; Poul Hage (1906–1984, four-time Danish chess champion and International Master), bookplate

LITERATURE:

ESTC T77409