Le Grand Etteilla, ou l'Art de tirer les cartes

Le Grand Etteilla, ou l'Art de tirer les cartes was first published in 1838 and remained in print for almost a century. This particular copy of the book is from circa 1850 and appears to be the same edition as the one owned by the Wellcome Library which can be viewed here . Unlike the Wellcome Library's copy, it is not missing any pages. At some point, one of the book's previous owners had it re-bound in hardback. The bookbinder included the original, albeit damaged, paperback covers which show an engraving of Etteilla (front) and a list of other works available from the publisher (back). Although the author is listed as "Julia Orsini," the work is widely attributed to Simon-François Blocquel (1780-1863), a printer and publisher based in Lille, France. Blocquel was fond of using pseudonyms in his publications, possibly as a buffer against accusations of plagiarism. As publishers of inexpensive chapbooks, Blocquel and his partners Castiaux and Delarue were not above borrowing from the work of other authors, sometimes going so far as to incorporate entire books verbatim. The name "Julia Orsini" is likely a tongue-in-cheek reference to Giulia Orsini ( née Farnese), the mistress of Pope Alexander VI. Very little of the book's content is original. Blocquel and company seem to have simply combined portions of previous works on the Tarot such as Joubert de La Salette's Dictionnaire synonymique du livre de Thot (1791), Gabrielle Paban's L'Art de tirer les cartes et les tarots (1826), and La Maison académique contenant les jeux... (1659). The Tarot images appended to the end of the book are attributed to "Z. Lismon" (another of Blocquel's pseudonyms) and were also sold separately as a deck of cards. The Major Arcana are more or less faithful reproductions of Etteilla's original 1789 deck, save for cards #10, 12, 15, and 21, whose images are taken from other publications. Regarding the Minor Arcana, the court cards are faithful to Etteilla's original deck, as are the central images of the twos and aces of each suit, but the central images of the other pip cards diverge slightly. The lower panels of all pip cards have also been changed. Instead of the "Egyptian" numbers (Batons), blank panels (Cups and Swords), and astrological visualizations (Deniers) that were present on Etteilla's 1789 deck, the panels contain new images taken from recycled engravings. Last but not least, all cards now have titles added to their left and right margins. Today, this particular variant of Etteilla deck is referred to as "Grand Etteilla II" according to Hoffmann and Kroppenstedt's 1972 classification system.