THE GREAT GALUMPHUS.: A new and amusing card game. Illustrated by Miss Jessie Veal.

Complete set of 48 cards [93 x 62 mm] including 4 'Privilege Cards' marked with a star; folded sheet of rules; contained in the original purple card slipcase [98 x 76 x 25mm], illustrated title label.

A round game based on nonsense names of creatures, probably the name The Great Galumphus derived from invention of the word 'galumph' by Lewis Carroll for Through the Looking Glass of 1872. Certainly all the other named creatures, whose images decorate the cards, are each in the same nonsense fashion and include the Crowned Cornubian, Tasselled Snort Hound, Bubbling Water-Hog, Pushfoot Polliwog, Climbing Chumtrunk, Painted Pooh-Pooh Cissling Sand-Snapper, Hairless Hunkum, Flying Umbratunk, Long Eared Scootler, Scru-Wuzzium, Lunar Lumpkin, Putty Faced Popcat, and Spotted Sniffle-Grub. This is a memory game where the players have to claim cards from their opponents after they have been turned over, with a set of cards needed to become the winner.

Jaques as a games maker had been established in 1795, however, it was John Jaques II in the mid Victorian era who is credited with inventing such perennials as Happy Families, Tiddledywinks, Ludo and Snakes and Ladders, where the company's fame was most in the ascendent. We have not been able to trace Miss Jessie Veal, but wonder if she actually lived in some part of the far flung British Empire, the animals and exotic scenery tend strongly to support this idea.