The text ends on the recto of l 6, the last page being blank.  There are sixteen woodcuts in the volume, which are used twenty-four times.  There has been some diversity of opinion as to the year in which this “Game of the Chesse” came from the press of Caxton.  The book is not dated.  Dibdin thought it one of the printer’s earliest efforts.  Figgins regarded it as the earliest issue of the Westminster press, and further believed that it was printed from cut metal types.  This is not the view of Mr. Blades, who says:  “An examination of the work, however, with a typographical eye does not afford a single evidence of very early workmanship.  All Caxton’s early books were uneven in the length of their lines—­this is quite even.  Not one of the early works had any signatures—­this is signed throughout.  These two features alone are quite sufficient to fix its date of impression at least as late as 1480, when Caxton first began the use of signatures; but when we find that every known copy of this edition of the ‘Chess-Book’ presents a thicker and more worn appearance than any one copy of any other book, there is good reason for supposing that this may have followed the ‘Tulli’ of 1481, and have been the last book for which Type No. 2* was used."[6]

Mr. Blades describes nine known copies, so that even fewer exemplars remain of the second edition than of its predecessor.  The copy in the King’s Library in the British Museum is imperfect, wanting several leaves, and is mended in many places.  The copy in the Pepysian Collection at Cambridge wants one-half of the last leaf.  Trinity College, Cambridge, has a perfect copy, “but a bad impression.”  The Bodleian copy is defective in not having the last leaf.  St. John’s College, Oxford, has a copy, from which one-half of d iii. has been torn away.  The Imperial Library at Vienna has an imperfect copy.  The Duke of Devonshire’s copy is perfect, but it is “a poor impression, and slightly stained.”  The Earl of Pembroke’s copy is very imperfect.  Earl Spencer’s is only slightly imperfect.  The prices fetched by the second edition have a sufficiently wide range.  In 1698, at Dr. Bernard’s sale, a copy fold for 1s. 6d.  Farmer’s copy in 1798 fetched L4 4s.  Ratcliffe’s copy was bought at his sale for L16 by Willett; and when his books came to the hammer in 1813, it was purchased by the Duke of Devonshire for L173 5s.[7] It is interesting to know that the copy of the second edition in the Bibliotheca Spenceriana formerly belonged to Laurence Sterne, who bought it for a few shillings at York![8]

In the present reprint, the text followed is that of the first edition, transcribed from the copy in the British Museum; but the variations, alterations, and additions made in the second issue are all recorded in footnotes.  The reader has, therefore, before him the work in all its fulness.  The same reasons that have led to the adoption of this course have also decided the publisher to include facsimiles of the curious woodcuts which appeared in the second edition.  These, although necessarily reductions in size, reproduce the quaint vigour of the originals.