Publication
The cards were originally published in December 1909 by the publisher William Rider & Son of London. The following year, a small guide by A.E. Waite entitled The Key to the Tarot was bundled with the cards, providing an overview of the traditions and history behind the cards, criticism of various interpretations, and extensive descriptions of their symbols. The year after that, a revised version, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, was issued that featured black-and-white plates of all 78 of Smith's cards.
Although the cards' crisp drawings are widely admired, the crude printing of colours in the original edition detracts from their effect. Several later versions of this deck, such as the Universal Waite deck, copy the Smith line drawings with minor changes and add more sophisticated coloring.
Read more about this topic: Rider-Waite Tarot Deck
Famous quotes containing the word publication:
“Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant; but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“I would rather have as my patron a host of anonymous citizens digging into their own pockets for the price of a book or a magazine than a small body of enlightened and responsible men administering public funds. I would rather chance my personal vision of truth striking home here and there in the chaos of publication that exists than attempt to filter it through a few sets of official, honorably public-spirited scruples.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)