"Game of Authors" Card Game, c. 1885.

Game of Authors is a card game, played much like “Go Fish,” or any number of games in which players must match specific cards to win. The deck consists of 48 cards, each bearing the name of an author or one of three of his works. The object of the game is to form complete sets of the four cards comprising the works of a particular author. The first Game of Authors was published in 1861, and was later published by Parker Brothers (of Massachusetts) and McLoughlin Brothers (of New York). The game was popular in the late 19th century. The game is the creation of Anne Abbott, a Beverly, Massachusetts, clergyman's daughter and editor of a young people's literary journal.

Here are the rules of the game, as printed on the directions:

• Deal the cards one at a time until all are given out. Each player then sorts his cards, keeping those of the same author together. These cards are won by calling.
• The player on the left of the dealer has first call. He calls on any player for any card necessary to complete a set of which he holds one or more cards. The asked finds the title among those at the top of his cards. If he holds the one named, he must give it to the caller, who continues to call on the same or any other player, until he fails to get the card asked for. The turn then passes to the person of whom the last card was called.
• As soon as a player secures the four cards of a book he announces it and lays them on the table. The game continues in this way until all the cards are made into books. The one having the largest number of books wins the game.

Gift of Leroy Redlon, 1977.

1965.034

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Wilkie Collins – Woman in White, Armadale, Man and Wife.
James Fenimore Cooper – The Spy, Last of the Mohicans, Red Rover.
Oliver Wendell Holmes – Autocrat Breakfast Table, Elsie Venner, Guardian Angel.
William M. Thackeray – Vanity Fair, Pendennis, The Newcomes.
Charles Dickens – Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Dombey and Son.
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Scarlet Letter, House of Seven Gables, Marble Faun.
Washington Irving – Sketch Book, Bracebridge Hall, Alhambra.
John G. Whittier – Maud Muller, Snow Bound, Tent on the Beach.
J. Russell Lowell – Biglow Papers, Sir Launfal, My Study Windows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men, English Traits, Conduct of Life.
Sir Walter Scott – Lady of the Lake, Waverley, Ivanhoe.
Alfred Tennyson – In Memoriam, The Princess, Idyls of the King.