This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/19/2018
Devol, George. Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi. Cincinnati: Devol & Haines, 1887. First edition. Blue cloth stamped gilt and blind. Portrait frontispiece of Devol. Plates. 8vo. Cloth well rubbed in spots, internally clean and bright; very good. Rare. 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 at the tender age of 13. An audaciously subtitled reprint dubbed the work “The Best Gambling Book Ever Published in America.” This is the first edition, though the Home Book Company of New York also released the work in 1887. Jessel’s bibliography only notes an 1889 edition.