The Doctrine of Chances: or, a Method of Calculating the Probability of Events in Play.

DE MOIVRE, Abraham.

Published by London, W. Pearson for the author, 1718., 1718

About this Item

4to, pp.[4], xiv, 175, [1]; copper-engraved ornament to title-page, woodcut and engraved head- and tailpieces; occasional stains and light foxing, otherwise a handsome copy on fine paper in contemporary Cambridge-panelled calf, gilt red morocco lettering-piece to spine; skilfully rebacked and recornered with the original spine relaid, spine worn and covers scuffed; armorial bookplate of Sir Alfred Sherlock Gooch to front pastedown, early ink inscription to front free endpaper (see below), two minor annotations in ink to pp.7 and 36.First edition, a very good copy with likely Virginian provenance, of this classic on the theory of probability and game theory, inscribed in multiple hands aboard the sixty-gun warship HMS Dunkirk, a human moment of indulgence stolen between the drudgery and danger of life aboard a Royal Naval ship. The Doctrine of Chances is dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton, President of the Royal Society, and personal friend of de Moivre. 'The principal contributions to our subject from de Moivre are his investigations respecting the Duration of Play, his Theory of Recurring Series, and his extension of the value of Bernoulli's Theorem by the aid of Stirling's Theorem . it will not be doubted that the Theory of Probability owes more to [de Moivre] than to any other mathematician, with the sole exception of Laplace' (Todhunter, A History of the mathematical Theory of probability from the time of Pascal to that of Laplace (1865), p.193). Our copy records a rare and fleeting moment of levity on deck: the inscription to the front free endpaper, written in multiple hands, reads 'Mr. Mollet & Mr Dobby playing at Backgamon | 29May 1740 under the awning on Board His | Majisties Ship Dunkirk Capt. Bolling | & Mr Stafford first Lieutenant looking on'. Ship's logs show that on 29 May 1740, the HMS Dunkirk was at sea off the Isles of Scilly, and travelled thirty-two miles in stormy weather; an unlikely time to play backgammon on deck. Furthermore, we can find no record of a Captain Bolling or any of the other officers named in British Army or Royal Navy lists for 1740. Could the year 1740 have been written in error instead of 1741, perhaps by force of habit in the early months of the new year (prior to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752, the year began on 25 March)? Circumstance seems to support this: on 29 May 1741 the conditions were decidedly different: the HMS Dunkirk was moored in fair weather at the mouth of the Magdalena River in Colombia, one of a fleet of British warships patrolling the north coast of South America in the aftermath of Admiral Vernon's disastrous attack on Cartagena earlier that year, which inflicted over ten thousand fatalities on British forces. The Dunkirk's manoeuvres off Cartagena provide a compelling clue to the possible identities of our officers and to the connection between the 1740s owner of this book and the later Gooch family provenance. In autumn 1740, SirWilliam Gooch (1681 1751), Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, led a regiment of some 3500 Virginian militiamen (known as 'Gooch's American Foot') to Jamaica; they would then take part in the failed attack on Cartagena. Gooch was excluded from the British council of war, and his men were disdained by the officers. At the start of 1741, many of Gooch's men were made deckhands on undermanned British ships, fifty-one of them embarking to the Dunkirk on 24 January 1741 as supernumeraries. In March, they sailed as de facto members of the Royal Navy, and 'a majority of the American troops never returned, being kept as conscripted sailors on the ships to which they had been abducted' (Slaughter, Independence: The Tangled American Revolution). Where we find no Captain Bollings in the UK, we find a plethora of them in Virginia, all members of the local militia. The Captain Bolling mentioned in the inscription is likely the Virginian John Bolling Jr (1700 1757), great-great-grandson of Pocahontas and John Rolfe and later colonel of the W.

Seller Inventory # G2751

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Doctrine of Chances: or, a Method of Calculating the Probability of Events in Play.
• Publisher: London, W. Pearson for the author, 1718.
• Publication Date: 1718
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition