This isolated card is from an early “Authors” deck. Most later versions were less generous with the engraving; and Cooper didn’t always survive revisions to the canon. (Posted by Doug Skinner)
Entries from December 2011
Children’s Card Games (158)
December 27th, 2011 · 1 Comment
Tags: Card Games · Ephemera · Literature
Happy Ripley-Newton Day
December 24th, 2011 · 3 Comments
December 25 is the birthday of Robert Ripley, the creator of “Believe It or Not,” and an inspirational figure to us here. To mark the occasion, here’s a photo of him at the dinner table. He was rather flamboyant. It’s also the birthday of Isaac Newton. American readers, it occurs to me, may be unaware […]
Children’s Card Games (157)
December 15th, 2011 · Comments Off on Children’s Card Games (157)
We’ll have a few examples of “Authors,” that curious game about collecting writers. This one has no indication of date or publisher. The canon is conventional: Scott, Longfellow, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Whittier, Poe, Tennyson, Dickens, Stevenson, Irving, and Emerson. Shakespeare is rather plump and peevish in this version, and his hair is curlier than I remember. […]
Tags: Card Games · Ephemera · Literature
Théophile Gautier on Ideology
December 15th, 2011 · 2 Comments
Théophile Gautier’s 1865 novel, La Belle-Jenny, is a boisterous, Romantic tale of conspiracy and intrigue, all of which fails. Couples are parted; lives are ruined. Near the end, Arthur Sidney, the character most to blame for all of this, sums up what he’s learned: Aimez quelqu’un ou quelque chose, un homme, un enfant, un chien, […]
Tags: Belief Systems · Education · Literature
Children’s Card Games (156)
December 13th, 2011 · 3 Comments
We have another specimen of “Old Maid”; this undated and anonymous deck has a holiday theme. In addition to the elf, there are a wreath, a gingerbread man, a smiling tree, and various animals with Santa hats. All are in this plain, rather clumsy style. And here’s the Old Maid. (Posted by Doug Skinner)
Tags: Card Games · Ephemera
An Ullage Dozen (43): Cortège
December 13th, 2011 · 2 Comments
Don’t sing from the heart; use your lungs. splilt Maybe your snap judgment Was just a crap judgment. Asemic acrostics: Many enthusiasts have found acrostics in Shakespeare and other writers; we can also find acrostics that do not spell out words, giving us a hidden message without linguistic significance. a pen that forms a line […]
Tags: Education
Children’s Card Games (155)
December 1st, 2011 · 1 Comment
This sushi themed deck was, apparently, published by Accoutrements. The number cards show sushi in multiple, the face cards show a larger roll. The Joker is represented by wasabi and soy sauce. (Posted by Doug Skinner)
Tags: Card Games · Ephemera
The Non-Cinema Rubric (3)
December 1st, 2011 · 2 Comments
The glum protagonist of Vladimir Nabokov’s first novel, Mary, sinks so low that he works as a movie extra: “Nothing was beneath his dignity; more than once he had even sold his shadow, as many of us have. In other words he went out to the suburbs to work as a movie extra on a […]
Tags: Non-cinema