Lewis William. Gioachino Greco on the Game of Chess

London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1819. — 496 p.In 1819, William Lewis published an English translation of a French edition of the games of Gioachino Greco (c.1600-c.1634). William Lewis, Gioachino Greco on the Game of Chess (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1819) offers Greco's games and commentary from one of England's strongest players in the early nineteenth century. Lewis briefly operated the Maelzel's automaton, The Turk, during its London exhibitions. Lewis had been a chess pupil of Jacob Henry Sarratt, whose book The Works of Damiano, Ruy-Lopez, and Salvio on the Game of Chess (London 1813) remains useful today.The first published edition of Le Jeu des Eschets dates to 1669, but Lewis may have worked from a more widely available version published later. Greco kept notebooks of games, as was the habit of chess players in his day, and made copies of portions of his notes for patrons. What we know of Greco's chess comes from these manuscripts and published compilations, such as Le Jeu des Eschets.Lewis did not simply translate the French text. Rather, he rearranged the games by opening. Greco's games in Lewis amount to 168 variations of 47 games with 15 the maximum number of variations in a single game. His arrangement was modified by Angelo Lewis who wrote under the pen name of Professor Louis Hoffmann (The Games of Greco [London: George Routledge & Sons, 1900]), which is likely the source for a frequent claim (found in Wikipedia, for instance) that Greco's collection consists of 77 games. Lewis's first game appears as games I and II in Hoffmann.In Lewis's and Hoffmann's books are games credited to Gioachino Greco that are not accessible through today's modern databases.