Authors is a classic card game dating back to 1861. The Authors deck contains 52 cards featuring color portraits of 13 honored writers, with lists of their four greatest literary works. Still played today as it was originally, the Authors Card Game is played with these 13 books of 4 cards each. The object is to collect complete books by calling for cards from other players. The authors featured include: Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, William Thackeray, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Longfellow, Sir Walter Scott, Alfred Tennyson, Louise May Alcott, and Edgar Allan Poe. The cards also have standard indices in both upper and lower corners. So the Authors deck can also be used for many traditional card games.