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 he will 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.
Date and time
6 March 2026 – 14:00-17:00
Location
Johanna Hudig building, room 1.27. Achter Sint Pieter 200, 3512 HT Utrecht, The Netherlands
Program
14:00 Welcome
14:05 Keynote: Jeroen Puttevils: “The Lure of Lady Luck in the First Two Centuries of Lotteries in the Low Countries”
14.35: Marius Haugen: “A Transnational and Transmedial History of European Lotteries”
14.50: Angela Fabris: “Dreams, Chance, and Magic Circle: The Genoese Lotto in Eighteenth-Century Italian Literature”
15.05: Johanne Slettvoll Kristiansen: “What was a Lottery in the Eighteenth-Century?”
15.20: Jeroen Salman: “What happened after the introduction of the Dutch state lottery in 1726?”
15.35-16.00: Q&A
16:00-17:00 Reception