Pope Joan (card game)

Pope Joan
1796 caricature by James Gilray showing Lady Georgiana Gordon holding the Pope (the 9) in a game of Pope Joan.
OriginEngland
TypeMatching
FamilyStops group
Players3-8
SkillsAttention
Cards51 cards
DeckFrench
PlayClockwise
Playing time20 min.
ChanceEasy
Related games
Michigan • Nain Jaune • Newmarket • Poch • Queen Nazarene

Pope Joan or Pope, a once popular Victorian family game, is an 18th-century English round game of cards for three to eight players derived from the French game of Matrimony and Comete[1] and ancestor to Spinado and the less elaborate Newmarket.[2] The game is related to the German Poch and French Nain Jaune.

Although its first published rules appeared in Hoyle's Games edition of 1814, an earlier reference to the game, originally called Pope Julius,[3] appeared in The Oxford English Dictionary in 1732.

  1. ^ Diagram Group The Little Giant Encyclopedia of Card Games pg. 130 Sterling (1995) ISBN 0-8069-1330-4
  2. ^ David Parlett, Oxford Dictionary of Card Games, pg. 221-222 Oxford University Press (1996) ISBN 0-19-869173-4
  3. ^ George Henry Townsend A manual of dates: A Dictionary of Reference Frederick Warne & Co. London (1867)