Libro del Juego de las Suertes

The so-called Book of the Game of Luck contains a game wherein the participants guess the answers to a set of primary questions about life, the point of which inter alia is to avoid doing nothing. This is all explained in the book’s prologue, which also informs the reader that these answers are nonsense. Although the author is unnamed, research indicates that the Italian poet Lorenzo Spirito Gualtieri (1426–96) was responsible for the work. The current Valencian specimen, which is adorned with detailed and instructive full-page woodcuts, was published on July 1st, 1528. The original manuscript of Libro della ventura, ovvero Libro delle sorti was created in Vicenza in the 1480’s with Italian editions being produced through the mid–16th century, as well as some 16th century French editions. A Castilian-language edition from 1502 in Milan and owned by Ferdinand Columbus (1488–1539), son of the great explorer and famous bibliophile, was reedited in the Valencian workshop of Jorge Costilla in 1515. It came into the Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid along with the collection of Antonio Rodríguez Moñino and María Brey, while the 1528 edition at hand, along with another unicum from 1535, are housed in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna.