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Robert Frederick Foster

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by P64 (talk | contribs) at 01:49, 7 July 2014 (deathdate per NYT short obituary [ref name=NYT]; a little more from that source; complete some Refs; refashion some as Notes; apost's and dashes). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This article is about the card game disseminator. For the Irish historian, see R. F. Foster (historian).
Cover
Title Page (with original owner's dated signature)
Foster's Complete Hoyle, published by Frederick A. Stokes Company, London and New York, 1897 (first edition)

Robert Frederick Foster (May 31, 1853 – December 25, 1945) of New York City, known as R. F. Foster, was a memory training promoter and the prolific writer of more than 50 nonfiction books.[1] He wrote primarily on the rules of play and methods for successful play of card, dice and board games.

Biography

R. F. Foster was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 31, 1853, the son of Alexander Frederick and Mary E. Macbrair.[2] He emigrated to the United States in 1872, probably,[a] and engaged in surveying and gold prospecting[1] and then in manufacturing before turning to the memory training and writing businesses in 1893.[3]

Married to Mary E. Johnson in 1891, he was the card editor for the New York Sun from 1895[2] to 1919[4] and for the New York Tribune from 1919[2] and a columnist for Vanity Fair magazine.[1] Foster's great achievement[5] was the treatise Foster's Complete Hoyle, first published in 1897; revised and republished frequently during his lifetime and then by others after his death. Having written numerous whist and bridge books by 1935, he was considered "the dean of living bridge authorities" at the time.[4]

A member of several card, athletic and golf clubs including: Knickerbockers Whist and the Cavendish Club, he was also a member of the American Society of Magicians.[b] He died December 25, 1945, in Eastham, Massachusetts.[6][7]

Memory trainer

Foster left employment at one of the largest manufacturing houses in Baltimore to become the business manager for a Professor Alphonse Loisette (aka Marcus Dwight Larrowe), a lecturer and promoter of systems and methods purporting to develop and improve a person’s memory skills. Foster resigned in April 1888, wishing not to be associated with Loisette's unethical personal and business practices and accusing him of being a "humbug and a fraud".[8] Foster subsequently joined William Joseph Ennever and others in a similar business venture, the Pelman School of Memory Training, a correspondence school, for which he delivered lectures and wrote training materials, most notably The Secret of Certainty in Recollection - The Pelman-Foster System, a book of five correspondence lessons dating from around 1905.[9]

Bibliography

Although he also wrote fiction and contributed short stories to magazines, his most prolific work was on the subject of card, dice and table games being author of over 50 such books covering every imaginable card game: euchre, poker, conquian, rummy, whist, auction bridge, contract bridge and other bridge variations, and many more. Foster also wrote on other games such as mahjong, dice, chess, and dominoes.

  • Foster's Whist Manual: A Complete System of Instruction in the Game. New York, Brentano (1890)
  • Foster's Bridge (1902)
  • Foster's Common Sense in Whist (1898) at Internet Archive
  • Foster, Robert Frederick: Poker (1901)
  • Foster, Robert Frederick: Foster's Practical Poker (1904)
  • Foster, Robert Frederick: Pocket Laws of Poker (1910)
  • Foster's Complete Hoyle: An Encyclopedia of Games (1909)
  • Cooncan (Conquián): A Game of Cards also Called "Rum" A full-text reproduction of Foster's 1913 publication in electronic form now in the public domain. See also the 2007 Edition, ISBN 0-548-31771-2.
  • Foster's Complete Hoyle: An Encyclopedia of All the Indoor Games Played at the Present Day With Suggestions for Good Play, a Full Code of Laws. Illustrative Hands. And a Brief Statement of the Doctrine of Chance as Applied to Games (1897), 625 pp.LCCN 04-11753
  • Foster's Modern Bridge Tactics: A Complete Exposition of the Lates Theories of Four-card Suit Bids, Approaching Bids, and Suit Distribution, Together with an Entirely New Theory of the No-trumper (1925)
  • Foster's Pirate Bridge: The Latest Development of Auction Bridge with the Full Code of the Official Laws (1917) ISBN 978-1-4446-4360-2

Contributions to whist and bridge

Foster invented or developed:

  • Self-playing Cards for Whist, Self-playing Cards for Bridge, and an improved design for Whist Markers.
  • The Foster Echo, an unblocking play against notrump intended to show count.[1]
  • The Rule of Eleven. Foster claims to have invented the Rule of Eleven in the winter of 1880-81.[10] The rule is explained in the first edition of his Foster's Whist Manual of 1890[11] and is a means for opener's partner to infer how many cards held by declarer are higher in rank than the card led; likewise, declarer can infer the same information about his right-hand-opponent's holding.
  • The first set of laws for contract bridge.[1]

Notelist

  1. ^ According to his short New York Times obituary, "Foster came to this country immediately after the Chicago fire of 1872."[6] But the Great Chicago Fire was in October 1871.
  2. ^ Other clubs included: Savage, National Liberal (London), Pacific Coast Club, Los Angeles Athletic Club, Wheatley Hills Golf Club, Deauville Beach Club.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Francis, Henry G.; Truscott, Alan F.; Francis, Dorthy A., eds. (2001). The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge (6th ed.). Memphis, TN: American Contract Bridge League. p. 645. ISBN 0-943855-44-6. OCLC 49606900.
  2. ^ a b c d Who's Who Among North American Authors. Volume IV, 1929–1930. Los Angeles: Golden Syndicate Publishing Company. p. 369.
  3. ^ "FOSTER, Robert Frederick". Who's Who,. 59: p. 627. 1907. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  4. ^ a b The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge. Edited by Ely Culbertson. Published by The Bridge World, 1935; pp. 162–63.
  5. ^ "R.F. Foster – A Profile". CardsAndDominoes.com.
  6. ^ a b "Robert F. Foster: International Bridge Expert Had Written a 'Complete Hoyle' ". The New York Times. December 27, 1945; p. 18.
  7. ^ "St. George Event Recalls A Towering Figure in Game". The New York Times. January 21, 1965. Retrieved 2011-03-18. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Robert Frederick Foster, who, for 60 years, had been one of the great figures in whist and bridge. He was a world authority on card games and his Foster's Complete Hoyle was placed in the time capsule at the 1939 New York World's Fair. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  8. ^ "Loisette" Exposed {...}. G.S. Fellows. New York: G.S. Fellows & Co. 1888. "Penetralia", pp. 217–20; including Foster's letter or resignation. [Photocopy.
  9. ^ "The Pelman School of Memory, The Pelman Institute and Pelmanism". Ennever/Enever family history & ancestry (ennever.com).
  10. ^ Foster's Whist Manual, London: Frederick A. Stokes, 1890, p. 36 note.
  11. ^ The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge, 6th ed., 2001, p. 399, notes that while Foster is generally credited with first writing about the rule in 1890, "it is said to have been discovered independently by E.M.F. Benecke of Oxford at about the same time".

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