Dead Souls
Dead Souls, or “Mertvye dushi igral’nye karty” produced in 2006 by Aleksei Orleanskii.
A 36 card pack with 2 jokers produced in 2006 by Aleksei Orleanskii. The title refers to the novel “Dead Souls” by Nikolai Gogol’, 1842.
There are two additional cards: the first shows a portrait of the artist Petr Mikhailovich Boklevskii, 1816-1897; the second explains that the pack is based upon the artist’s original illustrations. (Boklevskii produced several satirical albums of lithographs and illustrations, including: “A Gallery of Gogolian Types: The Inspector General", 1858 and “Types from the Poem Dead Souls”, 1895).
Above: Dead Souls, or “Mertvye dushi igral’nye karty” produced in 2006 by Aleksei Orleanskii. The reverse shows a portrait of Nikolai Gogol’ in an oval frame.
See also: Playing cards "Dead souls" Gogol types according to the drawings of the artist P. Boklevsky►
By Peter Burnett
Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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