Good morning everyone,

I am on holiday. This means that as well as sitting on a beach and reading for 8h a day, I’m playing a lot of cards, so here is a Fem Fri about women and cards.

We start with this utterly superb cover for the Japanese translation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando:

https://twitter.com/hering_david/status/1567494754518155266

The first recorded card game was played by a woman (and her in laws) too. I was very interested by the link between cards and another paper based innovation:

The first reference to the card game in world history dates no later than the 9th Century, when the Collection of Miscellanea at Duyang, written by Tang Dynasty writer Su E, described Princess Tongchang (daughter of Emperor Yizong of Tang) playing the “leaf game” in 868 with members of the Wei clan (the family of the princess’ husband). The Song Dynasty (960–1279) scholar Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) asserted that playing cards and card games existed at least since the mid-Tang Dynasty and associated their invention with the simultaneous development of using sheets or pages instead of paper rolls as a writing medium.

https://theplayingcardfactory.com/history

Now, these aren’t playing cards, but they are cards for having fun with – nineteenth century companion cards. Parents disapproved!

Mays has found a companion card that says “You May C Me Home To-Night,” suggesting that both men and women may have had cards up their sleeves. Some cards had a space for the giver to write his or her name, and Mays has found two examples in which that name is female. One reads “I Am Anna ‘Butch’ Engle Who The Devil Are You?” (where the word “Devil” is denoted by a picture of one). The other appears to be given to a woman by a woman. It reads, in part: “Miss Smith, Your beau I wish to be … Yours Truly, Alice Ramsey.”  

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/160104-escort-cards-acquaintance-flirtation-victorian-america-dating-history

Love, 

Alex.