33 ❖ Tiddlywinks • in Literature – North American Tiddlywinks Association

Even in the early 1890s, tiddlywinks was already well on its way to becoming a children’s game. The renowned author of juvenile tales, John Kendrick Bangs, wrote two books with tiddlywinks featured as the main characters. In Tiddledywink Tales (1891):

"Perhaps that’s a little too deep for you Jimmieboy," Blackey added, "but you see we Tiddledywinks have to jump as a matter of business. We jump for a living, so when we come to our sports we try to do something different." (page 171)

In addition to writing Tiddledywink Tales in 1891, John Kendrick Bangs wrote The Tiddledywink’s Poetry Book, first published in the United States in 1892 by R. H. Russel & Son.

The renowned author James Joyce mentions tiddledy winks, though just in passing, in his heady masterpiece, Ulysses, first published in Paris in 1922:

Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other frequently engaged his mind?
What to do with our wives.
What had been his hypothetical singular solutions?
Parlour games (dominos, halma, tiddledywinks, spilikins, cup and ball, nap, spoil five, bezique, twentyfive, beggar my neighbour, draughts, chess or backgammon): embroidery, darning or knitting for the policeaided clothing society: musical duets, mandoline and guitar, piano and flute, guitar and piano: legal scrivenery or envelope addressing: biweekly visits to variety entertainments: commercial activity as pleasantly commanding and pleasingly obeyed mistress proprietress in a cool dairy shop or warm cigar divan: the clandestine satisfaction of erotic irritation in masculine brothels, state inspected and medically controlled: social visits, at regular infrequent prevented intervals and with regular frequent preventive superintendence, to and from female acquaintances of recognised respectability in the vicinity: courses of evening instruction specially designed to render liberal instruction agreeable.

And in Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake (published in 1939), the following two cryptic references appear:

And her duffed coverpoint of a wickedy batter, whenever she druv behind her stumps for a tyddlesly wink through his tunnilclefft bagslops after the rising bounder's yorkers

Page 23, Viking hardcover edition.

And her duffed coverpoint of a wickedy batter, whenever she druv behind her stumps for a tyddlesly wink through his tunnilclefft bagslops after the rising bounder's yorkers

Page 583, Viking hardcover edition.

About the latter quote, Peter Chrisp’s blog gives his interpretation, as follows:

'a tyddlesly wink' 583.35 The Victorian parlour game of tiddlywinks, and the two unrelated Tyldesley families of Lancashire cricketers: the Worsley Tyldesleys, brothers Johnny and Ernest Tyldesley; and the Westhoughton Tyldesleys, brothers James, William, Harry and Dick Tyldesley. All of them played for their county, but the most famous was Ernest Tyldesley (1889-1962) Lancashire's most prolific run getter ever. Between 1919 and 1926, he amassed 38,874 runs.

4 July 2016

John Steinbeck in his Grapes of Wrath (1939):

And now a light truck approached, and as it came near, the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it. His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddlywink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway.

Page 13, Bantam paperback edition Tweet

the children squidged their toes in the red dust.

Page 87, Bantam paperback edition.

Vladimir Nabokov tantalizes all with a sexually provocative passage that mentions tiddlywinks in his famed 1955 novel, Lolita:

This is all very interesting, and I daresay you see me already frothing at the mouth in a fit; but no, I am not; I am just winking happy thoughts into a little tiddle cup. My little cup brims with tiddles.

North American Tiddlywinks Association

North American Tiddlywinks Association

Tiddlywinks • Origins & Evolution of the Noble & Royal Game

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33 ❖ Tiddlywinks • in Literature