Do you remember playing the Authors Card Game when you were young? We had a deck of cards made by Whitman when I was growing up and I loved playing this game with my siblings.

About a dozen or so years ago I hunted down a deck of the cards on eBay. One of the very few things that I have bought on eBay over the years. I don’t remember exactly how much I paid for the cards, but I am glad that I have them.

The set that I have is from the late 60’s or early 70’s and is in a plastic Whitman box.

The Authors Card Game has 44 cards. Actually 45 if you count the title/rule card :-). There are eleven different authors and each author has four cards. Authors is a classic matching game like Go Fish or Quartets where you try and collect sets or books of cards that have something in common. The most common variations have sets of four, so they are sometimes referred to as quarts.

Authors was created in 1861 by Anne Wales Abbott ( 1808-1908) who had also created the popular Dr. Busby card game. In her long life, she died at the age of 100, Anne was an author, editor and literary reviewer. I can imagine Anne drawing on her years of literary experience as she determined which authors and which of their works would be included in the game. Different sets over the years have featured different authors and works.

The Whitman set has the following authors:

Louisa May Alcott

James Fenimore Cooper

Charles Dickens

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Washington Irving

Henry W. Longfellow

Sir Walter Scott

William Shakespeare

Robert Louis Stevenson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Mark Twain

There are four works for each author. I will not list them all here.

I have read most of the 44 works from the 11 authors. I have been contemplating a quest to read through all of the books, or maybe just the ones that I haven’t read. I really don’t look forward to reading Shakespeare again. To me, plays are to be seen, not read :-). Stay tuned, you may see some of these cards in future posts. Perhaps you will see An Old-Fashioned Girl soon as it is one of the works I haven’t read, even though I have a copy of the book on my shelf.

In researching the Authors Card Game, I also found out a little bit more about Anne Wales Abbott. Her father was Abiel Abbott who was a preacher in Haverhill and Beverly, Massachusetts. The Abbott family was also well known for their work in education in New England. Anne’s uncle was Benjamin Abbott who was the second principal of Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. Many of you use something developed by a Phillips Exeter Academy alumni on a daily basis. Mark Zuckerburg went to school there.

I decided to make a quick check of Anne’s ancestry and found that she is a distant cousin. We share common ancestry in Richard Bayford who was born in Essex, England in about 1540. Not too close of cousins, but a connection :-). We are 7th cousins, 7 times removed.

Maybe we got some of the same literary genes since we both like to read.

Did you play Authors when you were young? I am sure that many of you played Go Fish.

Steven