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History of solitaires
For centuries, card games have been the
ideal entertainment for anyone, everywhere. This popularity has not
decreased over time. In fact, card games, especially
Solitaire, have become indispensable
to whomever needs a rest from daily stress and worries.
There is no specific information regarding
the origins of Solitaire games,
known in Great Britain as Patience games; but it is believed that they
originated at the same time card decks did.
Napoleon, the French Emperor, is said to
have spent much of his free time playing against a deck of cards.
Moreover, some of the most famous Solitaire
games are said to have been invented by him.
Solitaire only really became
fashionable starting with the Victorian age. The first book on the
argument was printed in 1870. It was "Illustrated Games of Patience" by
Lady Adelaide Cadogan. It contained 25 games and was reprinted many
times. In the United States, Mrs. E.D. Cheney published the book
"Patience" in the successive year.
The publishing house Dick & Fitzgerald in New York published a series of
books dedicated to Solitaire games
("Dick's Games of Patience") in 1883. A second series was published in
1898.
In the 1890's, a great populariser of the game was Miss Whitemore Jones.
Her 5 volumes on Solitaires were
reprinted for thirty years.
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Solitaires
"have a marvellous capacity both to soothe and challenge the mind of
the player" (Trevor Day and The Diagram Group, Collins Gem Patience
Card Games, HarperCollins Publishers, 1996, ISBN 0004720164, p. 3)
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"Patience is the mental equivalent of jogging: its purpose is to
tone the brain up and get rid of unsociable mental flabbiness."
(David Parlett, The Penguin Book of Patience, Penguin Books, 1980,
ISBN 0140463461, p. 11)
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"It has many virtues, not the last being that it teaches one the
self.discipline of being honest with oneself." (George F. Hervey,
The illustrated Book of Card Games for One, ISBN 0890091137, p. 7)
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