Manuscript playing cards. Poets card game, circa 1860s

Manuscript playing cards. Poets card game, circa 1860s, a complete deck of 52 manuscript playing cards, comprising 13 sets of four cards, each with poet card and three accompanying poem cards, each card with manuscript poet or poem title (in coloured inks), list of other cards in the set (in brown or black ink), and pen & ink illustration, most with watercolour, some with ink manuscript caption, dusty and somewhat finger-soiled, some minor marks, 'Sensitive Plant' & 'Madoc' soiled at foot, the latter with slight wear to bottom edge, 'Longfellow' with minor edge crease, square corners, plain versos, 'In Memoriam' verso with adhesive stain centrally, together with accompanying ink manuscript 'Rules' card, dusty with some staining, verso with ink manuscript quote 'Footsteps on the sand of time', and signed 'C.H.P. Chislehurst Kent', each card 90 x 61 mm, the cards mounted between two panes of glass and framed, each card attached to the glass by what appear to be 2 small hinges, 'Rules' card framed alone, the remainder mounted in their sets and framed in groups of 16, 16 & 20 respectively (none examined out of frames), the frames 62.5 x 56 cm and smaller (Quantity: 1) A unique pack of manuscript illustrated playing cards that may have been inspired by a mid-19th century card game of authors and their books. This pack was probably made shortly after 1864, as in this year Alfred Lord Tennyson published his poem Enoch Arden, the latest of all the poems mentioned. The poets included are: Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Percy Bysshe Shelley; Robert Southey; William Wordswort; Thomas Hood; John Keats; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Samuel Rogers; Walter Scott. The cards were mounted and framed in 1986 by John Jones of London and the work is believed to have been done according to the conservation standards of the time. The hinges seem visually similar to postage stamp paper or stamp hinge paper, and there appears to be no related discolouration.