Book of games: Prize book awarded to a schoolgirl. 1 U.S. copy.

[Games] / [Children] / Leopold Klette. Sammlung nützlicher und angenehmer Jugendspiele zur Beförderung körperlicher Stärke und Geschicklichkeit im Sommer, und zur Unterhaltung in Winterabenden. Grätz: gedruckt und verlegt bey Joh. Andreas Kienreich, 1814. 8vo [16.0 x 9.8 cm], [2] ff., 68 ff., with woodcut device on title page and woodcut headpiece. Bound in contemporary cardboard, subtle stamped chain decoration on spine, letterpress prize bookplate (filled out in manuscript) inside upper cover. Some damage to extremities of spine, spine and covers with rubbing, staining and edge wear, pen trials on pastedowns. Internal toning and staining, lost at upper margin of final leaf affecting a few words of top two lines.
 
 
Rare 1814 edition (3rd) of this handbook describing 70 “useful and fun children’s games for developing physical strength and dexterity in the summertime and for entertainment on winter evenings,” here in an example with a letterpress bookplate indicating that in 1816 it was given as a school prize to a certain Dorothea Stadler, a student in the city of Pilsen (today in the Czech Republic).
 
Among the many games described here are various ball games, forms of tag, card games, etc., including “The Blind Writer,” “Lawyers,” “Jacob, Where are You?,” “Pharmacy,” “Where’s the Cat?,” and “Who was it? Or, The Warm Hand.” 
 
The work, compiled by Leopold Klette, was apparently quite popular, appearing in 4 editions (1804, 1806, 1814 and 1827) from the press of Johann Andreas Kienreich in Grätz, but as is often the case with children’s titles, these books seem to have been used nearly to extinction, and each edition today is recorded in only 1 or 2 examples (OCLC, KVK), with the only U.S. institutional example being a copy of the 1806 edition at the NYPL.
 
 
* E. Roth and S. Weissbein, eds., Bibliographie des gesamten Sports, p. 163 (1804 ed.); K. C. Wildt, Daten zur Sportgeschichte: Europa von 1750 bis 1894, p. 131 (1804 ed.).