Marlborough’s Victories
Marlborough’s Victories playing cards, first published in 1707, depict Marlborough's campaigns and the personalities involved.
Marlborough’s Victories playing cards, 1707
Marlborough's Victories playing cards, first published in 1707, depict Marlborough's campaigns and the personalities involved. The elaborately engraved illustrations cover a variety of European political issues and include portraits of royalty connected with the campaigns. The spade suit comprises almost entirely a series of savage, not to say scurrilous attacks upon the French king, Louis XIV. The pack also sheds an interesting light on the fall of the Duke from public favour.
A large number of educational and political packs were published during the 17th-18th centuries. It has not yet been discovered who was the original publisher of these cards, but nearly every pack of pictorial cards since the 1670s except those with marked political involvement were reprinted or reissued by a Fleet Street stationer, John Lenthall from about 1710 onwards. A modern facsimile of this very rare pack is part of a range published by Harry Margary.
Each card lettered with suit at top right and, at top left, either a Roman numeral or the word 'Knave / Queen / King", also with text, sometimes verse, in a panel at the bottom, and text within the images.
Willshire, W. H.: A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum, Trustees of the British Museum, 1876, reprint 1975. (English 193)
By Simon Wintle
Member since February 01, 1996
Founder and editor of the World of Playing Cards since 1996. He is a former committee member of the IPCS and was graphics editor of The Playing-Card journal for many years. He has lived at various times in Chile, England and Wales and is currently living in Extremadura, Spain. Simon's first limited edition pack of playing cards was a replica of a seventeenth century traditional English pack, which he produced from woodblocks and stencils.
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