when idle hands

Authors card game first appeared in 1861. Every manufacturer produced a version. Children and adults learned the names of works by major authors.

1879 word-building set by McLoughlin Brothers.

A simple card game from Noyes, Snow & Co. teaching proverbs, from about 1880.

Ca. 1900 wood puzzle marked for the counties in New York State.

McLoughlin Brothers produced this question- and-answer game around 1890.

Parker Brothers’ 1895 Bible Game featured questions and answers.

Who could object to The Shakespeare Game, produced by Parker Brothers in 1903.

Two more McLoughlin Brothers Bible-themed card games.

Card games with a Charles Dickens theme and Old Testament questions.

In 1890 McLoughlin Brothers produced the games Pilgrim’s Progress, Going to Sunday School, and Tower of Babel. These all came in a slipcase disguised as a harmless pair of books.

1872 catalog for vendors, telling how proper games keep children home and off the streets, and offered wholesome amusement. Bradley’s Checkered Game of Life was an example that helped remove the negative associations of gaming.

1920 boxed version of Bradley’s Checkered Game of Life, marked as “The First Game Invented and Manufactured by Mr. Milton Bradley, Played for Over Fifty Years.”