DEVOL, George (1829 – 1903). Forty Years a Gambler on the M...

DEVOL, George (1829 – 1903). Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi. New York: Home Book Company, (1887). First edition thus. Elaborate pictorial wrappers (quite chipped but finely preserved and restored with archival tissue). Portrait frontispiece of Devol. 8vo. Illustrated. Internally very good. First example of this variant we have encountered.

Devol’s classic biography of life as a con man and crooked gambler recalls, in short anecdotes, how he learned the trade of the riverboat gambler as a boy. He could, it is said, “steal cards and cheat the boys at eleven; stack a deck at fourteen; he bested soldiers on the Rio Grande during the Mexican War; won hundreds of thousands from paymansters, cotton buyers, defaulters, and thieves; fought more rough and tumble fights than any man in America; and was the most daring gambler in the world.” Jessel’s bibliography only notes an 1889 edition.