The volume explores the way in which the lottery was imagined in early-modern and long-eighteenth-century Europe. It presents a series of interconnected case studies from Denmark-Norway, the German-speaking areas, Britain, the Low Countries, France, Italy, and Spain, which bring into dialogue a wide range of materials: lottery tickets and advertisements, visual art, prose fiction and plays, political, moral, and judicial treatises.

This material suggests how early-modern and long-eighteenth-century lotteries were perceived as inviting fantasies, dreams, and daydreams; as engendering folly, superstition, and compulsive playing; as leading to social misery, bankruptcy, and suicide; as betraying questions of risk, trust, and fairness; and as being deeply embedded in the political and financial development of an emerging modernity.