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A huge amount was published about chess in the United Kingdom before the First World War. The growing popularity of chess in Victorian Britain was reflected in an increasingly competitive market of books and periodicals aimed at players from beginner to expert. The author combines new information about the early history of the game with advice for researchers into chess history and traces the further development of chess literature well into the 20th century.
Topics include today's leading chess libraries and the use of digitized chess texts and research on the Web. Special attention is given to the columns that appeared in newspapers (national and provincial) and magazines from 1813 onwards. These articles, usually weekly, provide a wealth of information on early chess, much of which is not to be found elsewhere. The lengthy first appendix, an A to Z of almost 600 chess columns, constitutes a detailed research aid. Other appendices include corrections and supplements to standard works of reference on chess.
List of contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Abbreviations and Annotation Symbols
Notes on Old British Money and on Chess Notation
1. The Earliest Chess Editors: Egerton Smith and Thomas Wakley
Definition of a Column
Some Notes on Bibliographies
Early Reporting of Chess Events
The First Chess Editor: Egerton Smith
Thomas Wakley and The Lancet
2. The Heyday of Walker and Staunton
Early Years of Chess at Bell's Life in London
Illustrated London News: The Early Years
Some Other Pre-1850 Columns
More Columns in the 1850s
Early Chess in The Field
The Chess Column of The Era
3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860-1885
Wormald's Start in Chess Journalism
The Illustrated Weeklies
A Fine Column: Land and Water
Heyday of the Field Column
Steinitz's Other Columns
Columns in Various Periodicals
Chess in School Magazines
Bird's Innovative Chess Column
Nottingham Newspapers
Confusions over Newcastle Papers
Early Scottish Columns
Welsh Columns
Irish Chess Columns
4. Latter Years of the Chess Column
"Captain King" and the Rise of Syndication
Hoffer at The Field (and Elsewhere)
Muddle Over The Standard
Later Years at The Field
Some Complicated Columns
Gunsberg as Columnist
Later Years at the Illustrated London News
Chess Columns in More Recent Days
5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914
The Earliest Chess Periodicals
Early Rivals to the Chronicle
The Chess Player's Magazine
The Chess World
The Westminster Papers
The City of London Chess Magazine
Other English Magazines of the 1870s
Hoffer and Zukertort's Magazine
American Magazines of the 1870s and 1880s
Early Years of the British Chess Magazine
Other Late Victorian Magazines
Other Edwardian Chess Magazines
6. The Saga of the Chess Player's Chronicle
The Short Life of The British Miscellany
The Early Years of Staunton's C.P.C.
Brien's Tenure of the Chronicle
The Third Series
Skipworth and the Quarterly Chronicle
The Jenkin Interlude
The Ranken Years
Morgan Takes Over in 1881
The Final Series
7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books
Earliest British Chess Books
The Era of Philidor
Sarratt and Cochrane's Treatises
General Manuals from Lewis to Staunton
Early Game Collections
Jaenisch on the Openings
Problems and Studies
Miscellaneous Works
Later Game Collections and Tournament Books (1851 onwards)
Later Books about Problems
History and Culture of Chess
Books on the Openings
Annual Works and Directories
8. On Doing Chess History Today
On Archives, Libraries and Private Collections
The Murray Collection in Oxford
Genesis of the Chess Column List
About Digitization and Online Research
On Websites and Game Databases
The Uses of Genealogy
A Few Final Words
Appendices
I. British and Irish Chess Columns to 1914: An Annotated List
II. British and Irish Chess Magazines, 1837-1914: A Summary
III. Some Corrections to The Oxford Companion to Chess
IV.
Table of Contents of The British Miscellany
V. Some Amendments to Gaige's Chess Personalia
VI. The Chess Column of Our School Times
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
MSS in archives
Unpublished works
Secondary and reference works
Online Services and Useful Weblinks
Other works by the present author
Index of Games
General Index
About the author
Tim Harding played for Ireland at the 1984 FIDE chess olympiad in Thessaloniki. He is a FIDE Candidate Master and a Senior International Master of correspondence chess. He is a former editor of Chess Mail magazine and for almost 20 years he contributed monthly articles in "The Kibitzer" series at www.chesscafe.com. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.
