What is the history of Solitaire?

Solitaire, or Patience as it is known in England and her former colonies, is not one game, but a family. In the words of the author of the first American book on the subject, Mrs. Ednah Cheney:

The Game, or rather the style of game, called Patience, - forit is not one, but manifold; - has long been a great favorite in Europe…

It is known not only under these two names, but also as Klondike, Kabal(e), Cabale, Canfield, Réussite, Triangle, Cadogan and a variety of others.

Although the precise origin of the modern game is still debated, it is known with reasonable certainty to have emerged in Europe in the late 18th century, and to have either developed from, or in parallel with, a fortune-telling version of the game.

Despite the French names, the widespread use of French among the upper classes of Europe at the time does not help narrow the ultimate source.

# Note that for the purpose of this article, the terms Solitaire and Patience are used somewhat interchangably.

Evidence of Solitaire in Europe in the 18th century

The German book Das Neue Königliche l’Hombre is widely reported to be the first written description of a Solitaire-like game, but sources differ on which edition and in which year it was published. SolitaireCat.com went to the source, and found that the game is described in the twelth edition, published in Hamburg in 1788, but is absent in the prior edition from 1783.

The game is named in the book as Das Patiencespiel (The Patience Game), under the heading Patience, and is described as a game where there are two players, but they play alternately, and third parties bet on the outcome. The (machine translated) description is confusing to this writer, but the gist of it seems very much inline with the theme of Solitaire-like games.

Running the description of the game through Google Translate and DeepL provides a reasonable approximation of its content, although as with almost all German texts of this period, the text is Fraktur, which does present challenges to character recognition software, and as such, some manual adjustments were required:

This game is played by two people in such a way that alternately only one is the playing person. Generally, however, those present take part in this game by betting for or against the player. The nature of this game is as follows:

You lay out 52 cards from two complete and well shuffled decks of cards in the right and reverse order, and according to the cards to be removed, in 8 piles, as follows:

After you have properly shuffled the two complete decks, and the game is [begun]: you draw off one card after the other, which you place one by one or two on top of each other, until you get [an ace] or a king. The [aces] are then taken off above and the kings [laid] belowd.

Now, as the twos [& up] or the queens are drawn, they are placed on one of the 8 piles where they belong; so that when the game is quite ended and won, there is a complete game at the top as well as at the bottom; only that in the top heaps are the [aces] at the bottom and the kings on top, and in the bottom heaps are the kings at the bottom and the aces at the top.

The player is allowed to lay down 10 hands, each of which may be played once, to lay down before he has to discard; but if he has laid down 20 hands in this way, and cannot lay down the 21st card, then the game is lost: just as it is lost as soon as one cannot lay down a card that has been played; because the card on top can only be discarded later, e.g. If the ace of spades up to the nine of spaces is already laid down, and the seven of spades is laid down, but the six of spades is laid down and a seven of spades is placed on top of the spades due to lack of verse, the game is lost because the spades six and seven are at the top is already discarded, and below the [Pis que]. Seven must be discarded before the six of spades, but it is already occupied.

It is always safer to bet against the player than for him, because against two players, those who win are sure to lose 3.

There are still a few modifications made to this game, but they essentially agree with what has been described above.

Das Neue Königliche l’Hombre, 1788.
Translated via Google Translate and DeepL. Bracketed terms are manual edits.

Variations appear in later texts

The 1797 German Spiel-Almanach (Game Almenac) by Julius Cäsar provides addtional detail on the game, along with variations listed as Kleines Patience (Little Patience), Großes Patience (Great Patience), and Das Kabalespiel (The Cabal Game).

The various names given to the game in Europe hint at a fortune-telling origin

The game is known as Kabal / Kabale in Danish and Norwegian, likely stemming from the Polish Kabała (fortune telling), and all of which ultimately come from the Hebrew Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition.

Ross and Healey² provide well documented references to early Polish and Norwegian texts, where the fortune-telling nature of Kabale is clearly evident, and perhaps more importantly, its similarity to the game of Patience is noted.

Famed games scholar David Parlett³ also suggests that:

“Perhaps, then, the original purpose of a Patience game was light-heartedly to “divine the success of an undertaking, a vow, etc.”

He goes on to note that:

“The theory is further supported by the fact that the earliest description of Patience occurs within a few years of the invention of card layouts for cartomancy (fortune-telling), which, contrary to popular belief, is not reliably reported before about 1765”

Madame Bonaparte was a keen player of fortune-telling Patience

In Ross and Healey’s detailed article, they also discuss the origin of the (almost certainly false) widely-held belief that Napoleon played the game on St. Helena (see below), but miss an earlier reference to use of the fortune-telling variety, by none other than Napoleon’s wife in 1808:

On hearing the history of the pine-apple, she [Madame Bonaparte] predicted to me, “You will have a daughter;” and in support of her opinion proposed a game of patience. I knew by experience all the ennui which this unfortunate game promised; but there was no refusing; and in spite of my incredulity, I was compelled to sit down and see my destiny settled by the caprise of the cards.

It is known that the Émpress Josephine was superstitiously credulous in these matters, and, in fact, I was witness, in the years 1808 and 1809, to two events of this kind not a little extraordinary: This time she kept me above an hour, cutting with the right hand and the left, naming days, hours, and months, and ended at length, by confirming her prediction of a girl.

Memoirs of Napoleon, His Court and Family, Volume 1, by Laure Junot Abrantès (duchesse d’), 1836

There are other references in the diaries of French author Marie-Henri Beyle at around this time, which also mention the playing of patience in order to device future events:

Elle a fait une patience pour voir si je me marierais.

…Le résultat de la patience a été que j’aurais une femme très blonde. Ma bellemère l’est en effet extraordinairement, mais ma femme est brune, et on dit qu’elle aura de la vie.\

She played patience to see if I would marry

…The result of patience was that I would have a very blond wife. My mother-in-law is indeed extraordinarily so, but my wife is brunette, and they say she’ll have life.

Stendhal (1811), Journal. 4. 1810-1811, Paris, Le Divan ⁴

Earliest written references in English

Most sources quote the Quarterly Review published in 1816 as the earliest reference in English. In this article, the author recounts a story of Napoleon ordering a count to “play” Patience on St. Helena in 1815:

He [Napoleon] however recovered himself enough to ask to have the house searched for some old cards, and to send Las Cassas to sit at a table in the corner, to play alone with the offending cards, till he should make them run smoothly; and at this solitary game of patience, the count obsequiously played the rest of the evening.

The Quarterly Review - 1816*

* This story is also included in The Battle of Waterloo, compiled by John Booth, 1815.

Ross and Healey argue rather convincingly that the count was actually just trying to make the cards less sticky by repeated shuffling, but also rightly point out that regardless of the voracity of the story, the reference to Patience as a card game that would be played by a single person shows that “Patience was known in England by the beginning of 1816.”.

We found earlier references

Our research turned up a much earlier reference in English, in a letter to the weekly periodical “The Country Spectator” dated 19 February 1793:

The next earliest English reference (to the fortune-telling game) we found, is contained in the English novel “The Recluse of Norway”, by Anna Maria Porter:

Anastasia saying she took it for granted Señor Guevara liked music, seated herself at her harpsichord; Ellesif began a drawing, and Madame Sau. veur, after unsuccessfully asking Theodore to play with her at a variety of games, or to tell her fortune, took up the cards, and, talking all the time without receiving or caring for reply, amused herself with the solitary game of Patience.

The Recluse of Norway, by Anna Maria Porter, 1814

These references provide some indication that the game was known - and played - in England as early as the late 1700’s.

Earliest references by country

Although it is often not clear whether the fortune-telling variety of Patience, or the more modern single-player game is being discussed, the earliest references we are aware of are as follows:

Germany (1788)

As noted above, the twelth edition of the German book Das Neue Königliche l’Hombre - published in Hamburg in 1788 - gives a full description of a Solitaire-like game, named in the book as Das Patiencespiel (The Patience Game).

England (1793)

The earliest English references we are aware of are contained in the aforementioned letter to The Country Spectator in 1793, followed by The Recluse of Norway in 1814, and the more well-known story of Napoleon’s temper in 1815.

The first English book dedicated to patience games was not Lady Cadogan’s, as is almost universally attributed, but was instead an English translation of Madame De F’s 1842 French book Le Livre des Patiences, translated by Madame De Chatelain in 1859.

Although not specifically mentioned, it seems likely that this translation was also the source for U.S. author Ednah Cheney’s 1869 book Patience: A series of thirty games with cards. In it, she writes:

It remains for me to indicate the sources whence I have derived my information. The majority of these games are taken from a little book published first in France, and afterward translated into English, which accidentally came to my notice.

Patience - A Series of Games with Cards, by Ednah Dow Cheney, 1869

This was followed by Patience, by Perseverance, by William Henry Cremer in 1860.⁵

In 1874, Lady Adelaide Cadogan’s now famous Illustrated Games of Patience was published in London.

Sweden (~1815, maybe earlier)

In his Notes and reminiscences, H. G. Trolle-Wachtmeister gives some anecdotes about the old King Charles XIII of Sweden; in June, 1815, he has a reference to the King putting aside his patience-cards.

The remaining early Swedish references are difficult; it is not possible to say whether they refer to a two-handed gambling-game (perhaps the Patiencespiel of the Germans), or to normal single-handed Patience. Three are from 1808—from Journal of a Swedish girl during captivity in Russia, 1808-1809, by Adelaide von Hauswolff. The fourth is from a poem by J. D. Valerius (1776-1852), published in 1809.

Games and Puzzles, 1975-09: issue 40, A.S.C. Ross and F.G. Healey

Ross and Healy note that the following few decades saw a number of books published in Sweden that reference the game, lending some credence to Sweden as the origin of the “modern” game.

A reference to one such text can be seen in this 13 August, 1830 periodical Stockholms Dagblad.

Russia (1826)

The oldest known book of Patience games is widely reported to be Sobranie kartochnykh raskludok, published in 1826 in Moscow:

Alexander Pushkin’s short story from 1830 titled The Blizzard (Мете́ль, Metél’), contains the following excerpt, which seems to mention the single-player game:

The good old lady once sat alone in the drawing-room laying out her solitaire, when Burmin entered the room and enquired at once about Marya Gavrilovna

The Blizzard, Alexander Pushkin, 1831.
Translated from Russian by Wikisource

France (1842)

The earliest references in French come rather late compared with other languages, adding weight to the conclusion that despite the name, the game did not originate there.

The first known reference is actually a complete book on the game, first published in 1842 and titled Le Livre des patiences, by Madam De F, who is identified as Marquise De Fortia on the Internet Archive entry.

This book was subsequently translated into English, and likely formed the basis for the first American book on the subject - Patience: A series of thirty games with cards, by Ednah Cheney in 1869 (see below).

Following Madam De F’s work, was Recueil de quatre-vingts patiences avec des figures lithographiées (Collection of eighty patiences with lithographed figures), by Carl Jakob Durheim, 1857 ⁶

America (1848)

The game of Solitaire was mentioned during congressional debate in the first session of the thirtieth congress in 1848.

During consideration of the resolution: The Adjournment Resolution, John Clayton - U.S. Senator from Delaware - who had meandered onto the topic of the fitness of presidential candidates: General Taylor, General Case, and others - stated:

The result reminds me of one of those games at cards which is called “Solitaire,” in which you know a man plays against himself. Did you ever see a man sit down to play that game who did not cheat himself?

John M. Clayton, U.S. Senator from Delaware, July 5, 1848 ⁷

This is the first known reference using the name Solitaire.

Around ten years later, Jonathan Green’s 1857 book - Gambling Exposed. A Full Exposition of All the Various Arts, Mysteries, and Miseries of Gambling - describes a game card game named “Solitary”.

The first dedicated, card solitaire book, Patience: A series of thirty games with cards, was written by Ednah Cheney and published in 1869. As mentioned earlier, it is likely that this book was a rewrite of the earlier English translation of the 1842 French book Le Livre des patiences.

This was followed by Games at Cards for One Player by W Pole, published in McMillan’s Magazine, Vol 31 Iss 183 in 1874, and the better-known Dick’s Games of Patience, Or, Solitaire with Cards by William Brisbane Dick in 1883.