Hand coloured question and answer game, The New Game of Emulation, published in England by D Carvalho between 1827 and 1830

The playing sheet is landscape format, it opens flat and it folds to pocket size (three times horizontally and three times vertically) to be housed in a cardboard sleeve. The board has twenty squares: nineteen contain questions, the last shows the game instructions. The squares are numbered from one to nineteen.

Squares number two, four, eight, twelve, fourteen and eighteen show a woodcut, hand-coloured illustration. The illustrations are not related to the game questions (printed below the images). The grid of squares is 5 x 4cm and is visible on the paper, printed in black ink, and it marks the area of each square. A typographic ornamental border frames the grid across the four edges of the sheet. The game title is centred at the top, the printer’s imprint is centred at the bottom.

There is a hand written sheet with the answers to the questions; pink card slip case with a label showing four children; it is inscribed in ink 'J MUNDAY 1831' (?). The paper is watermarked 1826.

Purchased in 1954, part of the Raymond Barnett collection of toys and games. See also museum nos. E.1761-1954 and E.573-1940 which use 'Emulation' in their title; these games are quite different to this game.

Rewards: for a correct answer, one counter from the pool
Forfeits: incorrect or not known answers, payments into the pool and/or backwards movement.
No. of Players: any
Equipment required: teetotum marked 1 to 4; coloured marker for each player and a number of counters called FISHES with a determined value; one player to act as director who does not actually play

Rules:
DIRECTIONS TO PLAY THE GAME:
Any number of persons may play at this game each being provided with a coloured marker and a certain number of fishes, on which a nominal value should be put, that those which have lost may purchase of the winners; also must be had a teetotum with four sides marked 1, 2, 3, 4.*
A director (manager) to be appointed, who does not play, but sees that for every question properly answered, the player receives one from the pool etc., accordingly to the game and who also holds the explanation.
At the commencement of the game each put in pool 2 - all spin for who begins the game, the lowest leads, then his right hand player and so on - each spin is added to the number spun; but if more than 19 (which is game) he must go back as many as he went too forward.
*May be had at the same place as this was bought. (This refers to the game and the teetotum).

1. What is the weight of a sovereign and its number of shillings and pence?
2. What is the weight of a half sovereign?
3. Who was the gamut of music invented by & when? If not known, pay one to
the pool.
4. What is chronology, and from what is the word derived?
5. How many weeks and days in a year? If not known, go back to No. 4.
6. How many yards in a mile?
7. What is the weight of a crown piece? If not known, pay 1 to pool.
8. How many minutes in six hours? If not known, go back to No. 6.
9. How many months in a years and what are their names?
10. How much is a moidore, and what is its weight?
11. State in a regular manner the names and how many days in each month.
12. What is the length and breadth of Great Britain? If not known, pay 1 to the
pool.
13. When is the shortest day? If not known, go back to No. 12.
14. What are the names of those called Quarter-days and when do they fall?
15. When is the equinoxes or equal day and night? If not known, pay 1 to the
pool.
16. When is the longest day? If not known, pay 2 to the pool.
17. Into how many parts are the earth divided and what are they? If not known,
pay 1 to each player.
18. When was the Great Fire of London? If not known go back to No. 15.
19. When was Magna Charta signed by King John? If not known go back to
No. 17.
End of Game.

The woodcut illustrations have no connection with the questions asked. They are:
2. a boy fishing
4. a girl looking at a canary in a cage; cat looks on.
8. a girl opening a gate in the country.
12. two drummer boys
14. a street trader with a basket of flowers
18. a sailor aboard ship.

Rules placement: in compartment 20


The New Game of Emulation is a good example of the entangled relationship between children books and printed games, reflecting the common strategy adopted by printers (oftentimes also publishers and booksellers) of repurposing images and text across different media. Similarly to the other boardgames published by D. Carvalho that could be identified (The New Game of Public Buildings, The New Game of Chronology, The New Game of the Pence Table, The New Game of the Multiplication Table, and The New Geographical Game of Europe), the six illustrations part of The New Game of Emulation are transposed from a children's book (also published by D. Carvalho) titled Tales for the fireside, or Mamma’s easy lesson for little children.

The fact that the number of boardgames known is relatively small, compared to the more extensive catalogue of books, suggests that in the case of D. Carvalho the production of games was entirely a repurposing enterprise.

The playing sheet is crudely printed combining woodblock and metal type. More expensive boardgames of the same period were often printed from engravings and bound within embossed hardcovers. Cheaper materials for production and finishing suggest that D. Carvalho’s games were aimed at a less advantaged, perhaps working-class audience, challenging the common assumption that board games were produced for middle-class children.

The beginning of the nineteenth century saw a growing readership and demand for children's literature and educational games, and D. Carvalho’s products fitted into a new market of affordable books and games, targeting an upcoming working-class concerned with self-education, self-improvement, and willing to educate their children with the aid of moral and recreational games.

The New Games published by D. Carvalho asked questions about history, maths and geography, similarly to those found in school primers used to teach children the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic (the 3Rs), at a time when schooling for the poor was limited to self-organised ventures shaped by the church, or by the urgency for literacy of local working-class communities.

Five of the nineteen questions part of the game refer to weights and measures, this aspect suggests a certain preoccupation with events debated in the news. If the publication date of The New Game of Emulation is ca. 1826, we know that from 1824 and 1825 there were two Weights and Measure Acts which established uniformity of weights, measures and the origin of imperial units. It is therefore tempting to imagine that D. Carvalho selected and adapted topical questions to fit the purpose of his game.

In conclusion, the book Tales for the fireside (containing the six illustration featured in The New Game of Emulation) tells five good conduct examples for boys and girls, revealing a strong moral tone and suggesting that the word emulation part of the game title might refer to the images (and the content of the book), rather than to the questions of the game. The question behind the meaning of the title The New Game of Emulation or the Road to Knowledge could then be explained as a combination of the moral book Tales for the fireside with a teaching aid using common questions from primers and the news.

The paper on which the game is printed is watermarked 1826, but assuming that Carvalho's business in Finsbury Square opened in 1827, we can assume it would not have been printed earlier. Also, the woodblocks appear printed in the book Tales from the Fireside. The OPIE collection of books at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford dates this book at ca.1830.

This is a race game in which the players have to answer questions in order to progress. The playing sheet has 20 playing spaces. Of these, 19 have a question and some are illustrated. The last space has the rules. The woodcut illustrations have no connection with the questions asked. The game is played with a teetotum or spinner marked 1 to 4. Each player has a coloured marker and is given a number of counters called Fishes. A director or manager is appointed who holds the answers and oversees the play, but does not take part in the game.

The woodcut illustrations do not directly relate to the questions of the game and are repurposed from the children's book 'Tales for the fireside, or Mamma’s easy lesson for little children '(also published by D. Carvalho) without having a direct relationship to the text of the game. The word 'Emulation', part of the game title, suggest a further connection to the book, given the strong moral tone of the tales.

The 'New Game of Emulation' fits within a wide range of moral and knowledge games aimed at self-improvement and recreation and commonly diffused in early nineteenth century London.

E.1777-1954