Yorkshire Chess History

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“Chess Studies” by George Walker, 1844

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In 1844, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, of Paternoster Row, London, published a book by George Walker, entitled “Chess Studies”. It was actually a collection of games, which is not the present-day meaning of the term. There were 1024 games, played roughly in the fifty-year period 1834 to 1843, and almost totally unannotated.

As was common practice in those days, much of the information about a game that one would hope to find given, answers to questions such as who, where, when, and perhaps why, tended to be omitted, which is rather infuriating. Captions such as “A game played between Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones” or “A game between H. and S.” or “Won by Mr. P***g*l” left one wondering who the players were, when the game was played, where it was played, and so on. Mr. P***g*l was Mr. Perigal, but who did he beat, where and when?

This website contains a small number of games taken from this source.

As was the case with many book those days, the title page extended to a whole sentence describing the contents of the book. The title page of the book looked roughly as follows:

CHESS STUDIES :

COMPRISING

ONE THOUSAND GAMES,

ACTUALLY PLAYED DURING THE LAST HALF CENTURY ;

PRESENTING A UNIQUE COLLECTION

CLASSICAL AND BRILLIANT

SPECIMENS OF CHESS SKILL,

IN EVERY STAGE OF THE GAME:

AND THUS FORMING

A Complete Encyclopedia of Reference.

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BY GEORGE WALKER.

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LONDON

PRINTED FOR

LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,

PATERNOSTER ROW

1844.

Created

25/04/2012

Last Updated

25/04/2012