The History of Gambling in England

by John Ashton

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Author: John Ashton

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 1508503001
ISBN 13: 978-1508503002

“In his 1898 “The History of Gambling in England,” John Ashton traces the historical and philosophical roots of gambling – a ‘disease’ ‘most contagious’ – to ancient cosmology, to the divine play of Egyptian gods. To gamble is to align one’s fate with the cosmic dice throw, with the capricious forces of life. The capitalist impulse is a gambling one, and Ashton (like Thackeray’s narrator in Barry Lyndon) finds it in commercial speculation, in the ‘Stock Exchange,’ in the popularity of ‘life annuities,’ even in ‘insurance,’ which he deems a ‘beneficial’ ‘class of gambling.’…Play tugs at our strings. Victorian materialists may call the mysterious force nature, history, or society, rather than God, but they feel the tug nonetheless. Play humbles us. An exhilarating or horrifying sensation, it reminds us just how flimsy, how partial and perspectival, our knowledge and authority are in the grand scheme of things.” -Matthew Kaiser, “The World in Play: Portraits of a Victorian Concept

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The History of Gambling in England