The Doctrine of Chances or A Method of Calculating the Probability of Events in Play

London: "Printed by W. Pearson for the Author", MDCCXVIII (1718). Rare first edition of the first textbook on probability. Original boards, endpapers and spine. Tooled boards are whole but detached and rubbed heavily at corners. Spine is missing 2 1/2 panels of 6, lightly treated with leather preservative to mitigate flaking. Endpapers are present, front endpaper is chipped at front edge. Text block is sound, light darkening to edges of pages, top and front edges from use- else good copy, paper and print quality. Artists engraved, creative 'armorial' bookplate of Josiah M.(Montague) Goodall (1828-1893) of Charles Goodall and Son, Card Maker Master Employing 500 People. The book's title came to be synonymous with probability theory, and accordingly the phrase was used in Thomas Bayes' famous posthumous paper "An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances", wherein a version of Bayes' theorem was first introduced.