Chess.- Greco (Gioachino) The Royall Game of Chesse-Play, first edition in English, translated by Francis Beale, engraved portrait frontispiece just trimmed at fore-edge to plate-mark, title within typographic border, slightly trimmed at lower and fore-edge, woodcut illustration of a chess board on B7 verso, initial and final blank leaves present, some light foxing and browning,modern half calf, [Wing G1810; LN 395; Whyld & Ravilious 1656:2; Eales, A History of Chess, (1985), 96-97], 8vo, Printed for Henry Herringman, 1656.

⁂ The first work on chess in English to note that the rook was sometimes depicted as a castle. This is a translation of Gioachino's Trattato del nobilissimo giuoco degli scacchi. Greco was a native of Calabria, the same province of Naples that had produced the chess masters Giovanni Leonard and Michele di Mauro. A5r has a poem by Richard Lovelace and there are several states of the preliminaries known: our copy has A5r untitled and unsigned but A4v with catchword 'Sir'. Other states have a similar A5r but no catchword on A4v; or A5 signed either 'R.L.' or 'Richard Lovelace', signalling demonstrably later states.