[Playing Cards]

54 engraved cards (each 3 3/8 x 1 15/16 in.; 84 x 50 mm). Comprising 52 playing cards, 1 title card and 1 publisher's card, each backed onto 19th-century heavy card. All contained within a single early 20th-century brown straight-grained morocco slipcase modelled as a book and titled in gilt on 'spine'. 

Later ownership notation in a single unidentified hand on verso of each card

Cary Collection, HOL 26; D. Hoffman 1973, pp.45,47; Museum Willet Holthusyen 1976, p.73, no. 62; Lady Schreiber 1892, I:12; Hargrave, pp.163-65.

John Law's Comeuppance or: the Mississippi Bubble in Playing Cards—an attractive and extremely rare complete set of early-18th century playing cards, rooted in a great early American land scheme.

This set of cards in the  French suit system (hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades) lampoons John Law's Mississippi Bubble scheme, the South Sea Company, and other parties engaged in the disastrous speculation. The publisher's card bears the image of a large cock, which also appeared on John Law's arms. "John Law's Mississippi Bubble scheme started about 1717, was at its height in 1719, and collapsed in 1720 causing Law to flee from Paris. There are several allusions to the South Sea Company. On the three of spades, the three companies, the South Sea, the Mississippi, and the West Indian, sit side by side in a swing. On the four of spades, Madame la Petite (represented here as a black cat) is supposed to mean the wife of Thomas Knight, the cashier of the South Sea Company, who bought his shares in her name" - Hargrave. This series of cards can also be found as a plate in the Het Goote Tafereel der Dwaasheid...(Amsterdam, 1720), the great Mississippi Bubble satirical plate book. Here the engraved area of the cards is slightly taller, which confirms the present set is from an entirely different engraving than that which appears in the book.

Second edition, after the first of the previous year. Cards in both editions consist of an allegorical image set above humorous couplets.  While the images in each set are primarily the same, the couplets are entirely different.  According to Hargrave, a booklet was also issued with these cards, but it is absent here.