Victorian playing cards
54 different card designs including people, animals, flowers, costumes and ornaments popular during the nineteenth century.
This pack features 54 different card designs including people, animals, flowers, costumes and ornaments popular during the nineteenth century. Many of the illustrations have been reproduced from material published by Dover Publications and B. Shackman & Co., with the ensemble edited by Carole Murray. The pack was published in 1986 by U.S. Games Systems Inc., New York. The cards would have been more attractive had the size of the images been enlarged. Unfortunately, the images are relatively small, consequently leaving too much unused white space on the cards. See the box
Above: “Victorian playing cards” published by U.S. Games Systems Inc., New York, 1986.
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.
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.
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