Produced by David Starner, Louise Hope and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net Series Five: _Drama_ No. 1 Edward Moore, _The Gamester_ (1753) With an Introduction by Charles H. Peake and a Bibliographical Note by Philip R. Wikelund The Augustan Reprint Society July, 1948 _Price: 75 cents_ * * * * * _GENERAL EDITORS_ RICHARD C. BOYS, _University of Michigan_ EDWARD NILES HOOKER, _University of California, Los Angeles_ H. T. SWEDENBERG, JR., _University of California, Los Angeles_ _ASSISTANT EDITOR_ W. EARL BRITTON, _University of Michigan_ _ADVISORY EDITORS_ EMMETT L. AVERY, _State College of Washington_ BENJAMIN BOYCE, _University of Nebraska_ LOUIS I. BREDVOLD _University of Michigan_ CLEANTH BROOKS, _Yale University_ JAMES L. CLIFFORD, _Columbia University_ ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, _University of Chicago_ SAMUEL H. MONK, _University of Minnesota_ ERNEST MOSSNER, _University of Texas_ JAMES SUTHERLAND, _Queen Mary College, London_ Lithoprinted from copy supplied by author by Edwards Brothers, Inc. Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. 1948 * * * * * INTRODUCTION This reprint of Edward Moore's _The Gamester_ makes available to students of eighteenth century literature a play which, whatever its intrinsic merits, is historically important both as a vehicle for a century of great actors and as a contribution to the development of middle-class tragedy which had considerable influence on the Continent. _The Gamester_ was first presented at the Drury Lane Theatre February 7, 1753 with Garrick in the leading role, and ran for ten successive nights. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century it remained a popular stock piece--John Philip Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Barry, the Keans, Macready, and others having distinguished themselves in it--and in America from 1754 to 1875 it enjoyed even more performances than in England. (J.H. Caskey, _The Life and Works of Edward Moore_, 96-99). Moore's middle-class tragedy is the only really successful attempt to follow Lillo's decisive break with tradition in England in the eighteenth century. His background, like Lillo's, was humble, religious, and mercantile. The son of a dissenting pastor, Moore received his early education in dissenters' academies, and then served an apprenticeship to a London linen-draper. After a few years in Ireland as an agent for a merchant, Moore returned to London to join a partnership in the linen trade. The partnership was soon dissolved, and Moore turned to letters for a livelihood. Among his works are _Fables for the Female Sex_ (1744)