Whist is a classic English trick-taking card game which was widely played in the 18th and 19th centuries.

[3] In 1674, The Complete Gamester described the game Ruff and Honours as the most popular descendant of Triumph played in England during the 17th century.

Whist is described as a simpler, more staid, version of Ruff and Honours with the twos removed instead of having a stock.

[6] Whist was first played on scientific principles by gentlemen in the Crown Coffee House in Bedford Row, London, around 1728, according to Daines Barrington.

In 1862, Henry Jones, writing under the pseudonym "Cavendish", published The Principles of Whist Stated and Explained, and Its Practice Illustrated on an Original System, by Means of Hands Played Completely Through, which became the standard text.

[7] In his book, Jones outlined a comprehensive history of Whist, and suggested that its ancestors could include a game called Trionf, mentioned by a sixteenth century Italian poet named Berni, and a game called Trump (or Triumph), mentioned in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.

[8] Many subsequent editions and enlargements of Jones's book were published using the simpler title Cavendish on Whist.

Whist by now was governed by elaborate and rigid rules covering the laws of the game, etiquette and play which took time to study and master.

A pair with four points is unable to win game by Honours and needs to make an odd trick.

He frequently won at this quiet game, so very appropriate to his natureAt the sound of that name, falling unexpectedly into this annoying affair, the Assistant Commissioner dismissed brusquely the vague remembrance of his daily whist party at his club.

He entered his club to play from five to seven, before going home to dinner, forgetting for those two hours whatever was distasteful in his life, as though the game were a beneficent drug for allaying the pangs of moral discontent.The rubber was conducted with all that gravity of deportment and sedateness of demeanour which befit the pursuit entitled "whist"—a solemn observance, to which, as it appears to us, the title of "game" has been very irreverently and ignominiously applied