Jane Austen playing cards

Published November 16, 2023 • Updated November 17, 2023

Jane Austen playing cards published by Prospero Art, USA, 2013.

Published by Prospero Art in 2013, each suit in this pack is devoted to one of Jane Austen’s novels: Persuasion (Spades), Emma (Clubs), Sense & Sensibility (Diamonds) and Pride & Prejudice (Hearts). The aces and court cards present illustrations of the main characters from their ‘respective novel’, while the pip cards offer quotations. The drawings are by two Victorian illustrators: Hugh Thomson (1860 –1920) - renowned for his monumental contributions to visualizing Jane Austen's fiction and characters, and Chris Hammond (i.e. Christiana Mary Demain Hammond, 1860-1900) - the first identifiably female illustrator of Jane Austen’s novels. Both were members of the Cranford School of illustration. The two jokers show William Collins (from Pride & Prejudice) and Lucy Steele (from Sense & Sensibility). The pack was produced with two different coloured backs – gold and copper. The pack described here has the copper back. There is an extra card advertising two other packs from Prospero Art: Alice in Wonderland and Native American playing cards.

Jane Austen playing cards published by Prospero Art, USA, 2013

Above: Jane Austen playing cards published by Prospero Art, USA, 2013.

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By Peter Burnett

United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022

I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.

• Russian Playing Cards

Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.

Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.