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A fact from Irish (game) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 11 December 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that backgammon was derived from the esteemed 16th-century Scottish and English tables game of Irish and eventually surpassed it in popularity?
@Bermicourt: The article currently links to Monthly Review (London), but -- attempting to provide a link for it -- I followed the link provided there, and this doesn't seem to be a good match. Might your source be a different "Monthly Review"? Thanks. Phil wink (talk) 23:29, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Phil wink: the link is here and it's on page 609. However, Google Books may have the volume numbering wrong. It has Volume 130, but the contents of the document show that the article is part of Volume 1 (1833), Number 4. HTH. Bermicourt (talk) 09:53, 20 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bermicourt: Much obliged. I don't think Wikipedians are under any obligation to help others "improve" bibliographical entries that are already correctly presented... so I appreciate your going above and beyond. I notice that the entry for Howell is dated 1645, but the inline citation is 1650. I couldn't find PDFs for any editions this early, so I can't resolve it. My guess is that maybe the series started being published in 1645, but the second volume's date is 1650? But it's just a guess. I see 2 possibilities: a) if you can resolve which is correct, then, done; b) if you don't mind, I can cite instead a later edition, which would allow us to get a url and fuller publishing information. Thanks again. Phil wink (talk) 15:48, 20 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Phil wink: Thanks for spotting that. I think your deduction is right. I came across the quotation in two sources with two different dates:
Fiske (1905) states "In the “Letters” (1645) of James Howell, the editor of Cotgrave’s “French and English Dictionary,” .... there is a passage which refers not only to Irish, but to an early form of the word backgammon: “Though you have learnt to play at baggammon, you must not forget Irish which is a more serious and solid game.”
Thomas, C. Edgar (1922) states "James Howell, in one of his delightful "Familiar Letters" (1650) writes: "Though you have learned to play at Baggammon" – the spelling is interesting! – "you must not forget Irish which is a more serious and solid game."
However, Fiske unlocks the conundrum on p. 159 by saying "The earliest appearance of backgammon, which we can recall, was in the same century, in a book of great popularity in its day, and still one of the best collections of epistolary literature in English, the “Familiar Letters” of the traveller and student, James Howell (1596-1666), quaintly entitled by the author “Epistolae Ho-Elianae”, of which the first of many editions was issued in 1646. Howell writes it baggamon [sic]."
From that it would appear that Thomas is citing a later edition. I think should go with the earliest known date. Although Fiske cites two different dates (1645 and 1646), they may be irrelevant as, from the 1650 edition, the actual letter (p. 105). is dated 30 November 1635. I think we should thus quote that date which takes Baggammon 's earliest mention back a further decade. Bermicourt (talk) 16:56, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
