The Book of Parlour Games

1853

Special Collections GV1471 BP98

Philadelphia: Peck & Bliss

The image on this first American edition of Catherine Waterman’s classic Book of Parlour Games looks like a 19th century, pre-Civil War version of Twister, but is in fact Blind-man’s Bluff. Publishers Peck and Bliss must have issued this work in variant cloth colours, as evidenced by other copies for sale on various web book sites; two being salmon-coloured, and green. The ‘Bluff’ image on this faded blue cloth cover is unsigned, but it has been attributed to the Irish-born John Freely, an engraver who settled in New York about the 1840s.