[ CHESS]. Essai sur le jeu des echecs, Où l'on donne quelques regles pour le bien joüer, & remporter l'avantage par des coups fins & subtils, que l'on peut appeller les secrets de ce jeu. Par le sieur Philippe Stamma, natif d'Alep en Syrie. By Philip Stamma. 146, [3, errata], [1, blank] pp. One folding leaf containing two diagrams, included in pagination as pp. 13 and 14. 12mo., 140 x 80 mm, bound in contemporary French mottled sheep, covers ruled in blind, spine decoratively tooled in gilt in compartments with modern red morocco gilt lettering label, board edges decoratively tooled in gilt, marbled endpapers, edges stained red. Paris: De l'imprimerie de P. Emery, 1737.

First Edition. The first European book on chess to use the modern standard of notation. Page 146 concludes with a two-line manuscript inscription in Arabic in the hand of Stamma himself, which, when translated, reads, "This book printed in Paris under the name of Philip Stamma."

The first edition of this landmark work is very scarce. Only one copy has sold at auction in the last twenty-five years (Christie's South Kensington, May 8, 1992, lot 61, from the early chess library of Dr. Robert Blass); the Blass copy was bound in modern cloth-backed boards.

A native of Aleppo in Syria and a translator of Oriental languages, Philip Stamma was one of the top chess players of his day. Stamma's Essai sur le jeu des echecs was the first European book on chess to use algebraic notation very similar to today's standard form for the chess moves. "In his analysis, and in the problems and solutions... Stamma uses the algebraical notation which must have been familiar to him in the East. For the first time it was possible to place the move and its reply on a single line, and to introduce order and ease of reference for the unattractive record of older works" (Murray, p. 848).

Title slightly browned, small stain in the upper margin of first few gatherings. Errata corrected in the text in contemporary ink, several early marginal ink notes. An excellent copy.

DeLucia 801.