A Scheme for a New Lottery: or, a Husband and a Coach and Six for Forty Shillings. Being very advantageous to both Sexes; where a Man may have a Coach and Six and a Wife for Nothing..
- London: Printed for T. Dormer, 1732
London: Printed for T. Dormer, 1732. First edition. Modern quarter morocco over cloth with gilt to spine. Measuring 180 x 111mm and collating complete including frontis, folding game board, and concluding woodcut: [2], 62, [2]. From the collection of stage magician Ricky Jay, with his bookplate to upper pastedown. Top margin trimmed close with consistent loss to running headers and occasional loss to page numbers, with no other text effected. Pages somewhat toned with minor marginal chips, but otherwise unmarked. A scarce satire playing both on the rising popularity of get-rich-quick schemes and on the economics of the marriage market, the present is the only example to appear in the auction record. OCLC locates only twelve institutional copies. The present is the only example currently in trade.
A Scheme for a New Lottery warns readers against the dangers posed by get-rich-quick schemes, targeting large-scale scams like the recently burst South Sea Bubble (sometimes called the world’s first Ponzi scheme) and the pawn-broking swindle of the so-called Charitable Corporation. These scams were appealing to ordinary people at a time when few were “successful in using wealth from trade to found a landed family” (Rapp). Mocking both the conmen and the conned, A Scheme satirically proposes “Another Lottery, which may prove a general benefit to all concern’d; as there is no better Remedy for a Bite from a Mad Dog than the Liver of the Dog that bit.” The proposed lottery, filled with abstruse rules and convoluted promises, ensures that the cycle continues.
A Scheme also mocks marriage as a scam in which women could either make a wise match in a rich man or lose it all by marrying down. The lottery provides “Fifty Thousand tickets to be deliver’d to Maids, or Widows, or any that appear to be such” in the hopes of winning a financially stable husband represented by the tickets drawn. Such a match could be a good one: “A Ware-House Keeper with the Salary of a Hundred Pounds” or “the Governour.” It could also, by virtue of lottery, be a loss: “2 Scotchmen, both Pedlars, 500 Broken Booksellers,” and a range of other ruinous bounders are also listed as prizes. For those who desire an advance attempt, the folding game bound in the book invites blindfolded women to stick a pin in the board to claim their prize. The present copy was played (gently), with pin marks revealing a Blacksmith and a Valet de Chambre among those husbands won
The popularity of A Scheme resulted in a reissue the same year, with a canceled title page as The Ladies Lottery and falsely attributed to Swift.
ESTC N20921.
A Scheme for a New Lottery warns readers against the dangers posed by get-rich-quick schemes, targeting large-scale scams like the recently burst South Sea Bubble (sometimes called the world’s first Ponzi scheme) and the pawn-broking swindle of the so-called Charitable Corporation. These scams were appealing to ordinary people at a time when few were “successful in using wealth from trade to found a landed family” (Rapp). Mocking both the conmen and the conned, A Scheme satirically proposes “Another Lottery, which may prove a general benefit to all concern’d; as there is no better Remedy for a Bite from a Mad Dog than the Liver of the Dog that bit.” The proposed lottery, filled with abstruse rules and convoluted promises, ensures that the cycle continues.
A Scheme also mocks marriage as a scam in which women could either make a wise match in a rich man or lose it all by marrying down. The lottery provides “Fifty Thousand tickets to be deliver’d to Maids, or Widows, or any that appear to be such” in the hopes of winning a financially stable husband represented by the tickets drawn. Such a match could be a good one: “A Ware-House Keeper with the Salary of a Hundred Pounds” or “the Governour.” It could also, by virtue of lottery, be a loss: “2 Scotchmen, both Pedlars, 500 Broken Booksellers,” and a range of other ruinous bounders are also listed as prizes. For those who desire an advance attempt, the folding game bound in the book invites blindfolded women to stick a pin in the board to claim their prize. The present copy was played (gently), with pin marks revealing a Blacksmith and a Valet de Chambre among those husbands won
The popularity of A Scheme resulted in a reissue the same year, with a canceled title page as The Ladies Lottery and falsely attributed to Swift.
ESTC N20921.