Card game

History of the wonderful game of solitaire

Solitaire has a long history and at one time had a less than stellar reputation.Many famous figures played solitaire in the early days. When Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena in 1816 he used to play Patience to pass the time. Many games use his name to this day.

Several famous works like War and Peace and Great Expectations mention solitaire.Franklin D. Roosevelt was another of the many well known avid solitaire players. His favorite solitaire game was Spider solitaire.Solitaire had a part in the casino as well. The solitaire game, Canfield, was played for $52 and the player won $5 for each card founded. The house would win an average of $25 per hand, however, each game required a dealer of sorts to watch the player, so the profit was not as high as one might think. Today this game is called Klondike.

These pages describe card games that are no longer widely played, if played at all, but which are of historical interest for one reason or another. I'm compiling them at the suggestion of John McLeod, who tells me that visitors to his Card Games web site (see link below) often inquire after the play of some old game that they have come across in period novels or cultural history. Some of the descriptions first appeared in my book The Oxford Guide to Card Games (1990, republished as A History of Card Games in 1991), but I've since been revising them in the light of further research and discoveries. If you have any comments, queries, or suggestions for additional entries, please address them to me via the mailing link below.