Book launch: Lottery fantasies, follies, and controversies. A cultural history of European lotteries

On Friday 6 March, the Utrecht University Centre for Early Modern Studies (UUCMS) will organise the launch of the volume Lottery fantasies, follies, and controversies. A cultural history of European lotteries. The volume explores the ways in which the lottery was imagined in early modern Europe, ranging from inviting fantasies to social misery.

The book is published by De Gruyter-Brill and edited by Johanne Slettvoll Kristiansen, Marius Warholm Haugen (both Norwegian University of Science and Technology), and Angela Fabris (University of Klagenfurt). Jeroen Puttevils (University of Antwerp) will be keynote speaker at the launch and talk about early modern lotteries. The other speakers are the editors of the volume and Jeroen Salman (Utrecht University and UUCMS).

Early modern lotteries

The book presents case studies from several countries which bring into dialogue a wide range of materials. These include lottery tickets and advertisements, pamphlets and periodicals, visual art, popular songs, poetry, prose fiction and plays, political, moral, and judicial treatises.

This material suggests how lotteries were perceived as inviting fantasies, dreams, and daydreams. They engender folly, superstition, and compulsive playing. They lead to social misery, bankruptcy, and suicide. They betray questions of risk, trust, and fairness and are deeply embedded in the political and financial development of an emerging modernity.