Edward Wallis

Edward Wallis was the son of John Wallis, one of the earliest specialist game-makers in England; he was the eldest son, so inherited the family business in 1818, while his father made separate provision for his second son, also John, to set up a separate business.

Wallis continued to publish all manner of games over the next forty or so years, apparently with considerable success; in about 1847 he sold the games business to John Passmore, one member of a family of printers; he sold a jewellery business in 1851, and retired from trade.

The most famous of his games are Wallis’s New Railway Game, or Tour through England and Wales (c1835), seemingly the first game map constructed round the booming railway network in England, the Game of Star-Spangled Banner, or emigrants to the United States (c1842) and his Wallis’s New Game Of Wanderers In The Wilderness (c1844), drawn by John Henry Banks.