Another Jones, not related to Henry, Miss Mary Whitmore Jones wrote 5 volumes of solitaire books over a twenty year period around the the 1890's. Several other publishers of various game books also added solitaire to their long lists of games in their titles. One of the most complete solitaire books was written by Albert Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith. Their latest edition contains rules to over 225 solitaire games and was used in this writing.

Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" mentions a scene that took place in 1808 where the characters were playing patience. Charles Dickens "Great Expectations" mentions solitaire in its story. In Evelyn Waugh's "A Handful of Dust", a character plays patience while waiting for news of a death to reach London.

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel [The Brothers Karamazov], the character Grushenka played a solitaire game called "Fools", a Russian equivalent of "Idiot's Delight", to get through times of crisis. A very popular solitaire game, spider solitaire, was played by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Somerset Maugham's "The Gentleman in the Parlour"  mentions Spider solitaire and quotes playin

ng solitaire as "a flippant disposition.

In John Steinbeck's novella Of [Mice and Men], protagonist George Milton often plays Solitaire on the road and on the farm. In "Peter Duck", one of the books in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series, Captain Flint keeps himself occupied by playing Miss Milligan.

In the 1962 movie "The Manchurian Candidate", Raymond Shaw is compelled to perform specific actions through a brainwashing trigger, which often includes a game of traditional solitaire and finding the queen of diamonds. In the Finnish TV-series "Hovimäki" Aunt Victoria is very fond of playing solitaire.

Several solitaire games have gained fame through literature and other avenues. Some solitaire games were invented in unexpected places. A notable inventor of solitaire games was Bill Beers. He was in a mental asylum when he invented a variation of Cribbage Solitaire. Prisoners had plenty of time to play solitaire, but were unable to use traditional cards because they could be used as an edged weapon. They were forced to use thicker tiles for cards that were bulky and hard to handle.