[GAME] Nouveau jeu de Loto Géographique et Universel, ou Tableaux des capitales de l’univers.

[Paris] : [A. Lion], n.d. [c.1845]. Original box of thick card, 230 x 290 x 40 mm, the lid with paste-down chromolithograph; containing 18 sections of playing board (each 125 x 215 mm), each with a paste-down lithograph illustrating five different locations, mostly major cities (all 90 locations illustrated are briefly described in an accompanying text), two original silk pouches, one containing 90 numbered wooden discs and the other 64 glass counters, and the rules sheet (390 x 250 mm), with the name of the original young Parisian owner Charles Bayle, rue du Port aux Vins 7 bis, Suresnes (now the Novotel!). The game is complete (with the exception, perhaps, of a few of the glass counters), with the box and all components in excellent condition.

A beautifully produced nineteenth-century French pedagogical game of geographical lotto, designed to teach children about the capital cities (and remote regions) of the world. The fact that one of these regions is the Republic of Texas – which only existed from 1836 to the end of 1845 – suggests that the game was almost certainly published no later than 1845.

If the number on the wooden disc drawn from one of the pouches corresponds to the number of one of the locations on a player’s board, the player covers the corresponding number on his/her board with a glass disc. Amongst the illustrated and described places are Tahiti (as well as Otaiti), Sydney, the Marquesas, the Marianas, Java, Borneo, and Timor. The information given about Sydney includes the population statistic of 30,000, a number that had been reached by the early 1840s.