This was the first deck published by William Rider & Son, Ltd. They had just acquired the Phillip Wellby collection (a famed Victorian era occult publisher), and were publishing works by Arthur Waite, who had been previously published by Wellby under the nom de plume “Grand Orient.”

It was preceded by an experimental deck printed a few months earlier for an arts & crafts fair, but the stock was of poor quality for actual use so this “A” deck came into being at the end of March, 1910. What sets it apart from previous decks (by Etteilla, Wirth, and the Marseilles variants) is the collection of scenes on every card, not just the trumps (errantly called the “major” Arcana to this day, thanks to Jean-Baptiste Pitois, a.k.a. “Paul Christian”). That said, comparisons of this deck versus the above will show how much Waite liberally drew from other published decks. For more information on this revolutionary deck please explore this site.