BIBLIOGRAPHIE DER SPIELBÜCHER HRSG. VON GÜNTHER G BAUER. ERSTER BAND: 1473-1700

Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann Verlag, 1996. cloth. Games. 4to. cloth. 472 pages. Hiersemanns bibliographische Handbücher, 12. First edition. A fine copy. With b&w illustrations.



In particular, cultural historians, game researchers, game collectors and inventors, librarians, antiquarians, and major auction houses around the world have had to do without a comprehensive bibliography of old gamebooks. Game studies, in particular, as one of the newest branches of cultural history, but also interdisciplinary disciplines such as law, theology, medicine, psychology, pedagogy, and others, have until now relied on chance discoveries and knowledge.



This book is the first volume of the two-part bibliography of gamebooks and covers all practical theoretical and literary individual prints from the time of incunabula to 1700 that exclusively or predominantly deal with games. This includes all kinds of game instruction books (rulebooks, instructions for magic tricks and scientific games, educational game books, conversation games, lotteries and oracle games, etc.), scientific treatises (historical, philological, legal, moral, pedagogical, medical, and other studies), texts on probability theory, provided they relate to games, poetry, drama, and prose, printed musical works, and illustrated presentations in book form. The term "game" is understood in its core meaning, i.e., texts on festivals, tournaments, and sports in the modern sense are not included, but ball and movement games are.



The language area covered is European, including Latin, but excluding Slavic and Scandinavian languages; the latter will be added in the second volume. The precise and detailed title and description of the printed works includes the naming of the various editions and editions, references to sources and secondary literature, a commentary with biographical, textual, and content information, and the location of the works with the library's call number. Three indexes: Authors, Editors, Translators, Editors; Printers, Publishers, Booksellers; and Games, complement the information in the main entries and are intended to facilitate the targeted retrieval of relevant information.



Selected illustrations from the printed works (title plates, frontispieces) document the iconographic aspect of these texts. The introduction, presented in German, English, and French, analyzes the bibliographical context and historical development of the works included.