Walker's Tour through England and Wales, a New Geographical Pastime.

London, 1809. Engraved cartographic table-game, 53 x 66 cm, dissected into 18 panels and laid on linen, original hand colour, two columns of rules and town descriptions to left and right margins; folding into publisher’s card slipcase, worn, printed label to upper cover. Most games of this nature were educational, and in this case players learn by ‘visiting’ towns and cities as they race around the board. There are strong similarities with Wallis’ ‘Tour through England and Wales’ which appeared in 1794, although players follow a different route and there is considerable variation in stops (which here include Eddystone Lighthouse, off the coast). There is a marked absence of snakes or ladders, which may have been considered too frivolous, and the only forfeits are missed turns. The Dartons were Quakers (William Darton senior joined the Society of Friends in 1777), which occasionally shows in the game. Any player landing on Pontefract misses a turn ‘to walk to the interesting school at Ackworth’ a Quaker boarding school founded in 1779; visiting Newmarket, we learn that horse-racing is a ‘cruel diversion’. William Darton junior and his son Thomas worked together between 1806 and June 1810, and both are included in the imprint on the map. A tour through Europe was published as a companion game in 1810. both games were authored by John Walker: engraver, geographer and physician, an associate of Tom Paine and an exponent of many radical causes (he evidemtly got on well with the Dartons). He served as a doctor with the British army during the Egpytian campaign against Napoleon, and became a champion for the controversial new science of vaccination. In later life he claimed to have vaccinated over 100,000 people. Map