C L E V E L A N D
P U B L I C L I B R A R Y
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John G. White/ Chess Collection |
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Collection
History |
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Collection
Scope |
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Chess Sets
Exhibit |
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Paul H.
Little |
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Instruction
Books. Books for beginners as well as for
experienced players are extensively
collected. Analysis of holdings shows that 80% of
the beginners' books are written in English
while 90% of advanced books are written in
European and Slavic languages. |
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Chess
Problems. The collection includes
outstanding items on chess problems. As examples
one can single out A. Montigny's original
manuscript on Les Stratagemes des
Echecs (3 volumes from the late 18th century)
and its 1802 Paris edition, three editions in
German, and the 1818 English edition; Miron J.
Hazeltine's manuscript on Chess
Autographs, End-games and Problems (1891) and
his Letters and Autographs (10 volumes,
1858-1861); Tiruvengadachariya Sastri's
Essays on Chess (Bombay, 1814), and Eric Hassberg's
papers, correspondence, and documents donated in
1980-1986 (8 linear feet). |
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Indoor
Games. Books on indoor games are well
represented. The collection includes Innocenzio
Ringhieri's Cento Givochi in three
sixteenth-century editions, twenty-one editions
of the Academie des Jeux (1718-1810), and
seventy-five editions of Hoyle's
Games (1743 to date). |
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Asian &
European Manuscripts. In 1946, Francis E.
Sommer, the cataloger of the collections,
identified 167 catalogs of Asian manuscripts held
by libraries in Europe and Asia [note]. These
catalogs had been in White's original
collection, and based on these and other
manuscript catalogs listing Western-language
materials, White compiled his comprehensive
bibliography of chess passages in manuscripts
found in 145 European and Indian libraries
[note]. This unpublished bibliography has proved
invaluable for researchers, especially in the
humanities. |
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Primary Source
Materials. Primary source materials
include original correspondence addressed to
White from G.B. Fraser, Eugene B. Cook, Antonius
van der Linde, Tassilo von Heydebrand und der
Lasa, Harold J. R. Murray, and Alain C. White,
dating back to 1870. In 1980 the department was
able to augment these files by purchasing
White's letters written to Eugene B. Cook,
discussing chess history, the state of research
in chess history, acquisitions, and chess
publications. Letters of chess players collected
by John G. White, Alain C. White, Miron J.
Hazeltine, and others are indexed and cataloged
under the name of the collector. Letters
purchased after 1928 are cataloged as individual
manuscript items or as groups of manuscripts
under the name of the author. |
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Treatises on the
Game of Chess. Treatises on the game of
chess have been acquired systematically and
include works ranging from twelfth-century Arabic
manuscripts to works of the twentieth century.
The White Collection holds all obtainable copies
of texts written by early Near Eastern chess
writers, including al-Adli, Ibn Abi Hajalah,
Ibrahim Faris, Firdusi, and others, produced
between 1140 and 1600. There are more than 50
Indian treatises and over 100 titles written in
Chinese and other Asian languages. Japanese
treatises on the game of shogi and go are well
represented. Among the earliest works is Sho
Shogi Zushiki (Various Chess
Diagrams) published in four volumes in
1696. The literature of chess in Europe begins in the thirteenth century. The Cleveland Public Library collection is well represented with early European treatises; for example, from medieval Spain, the Alfonisine manuscript (1283); from Italy, manuscripts of Bonus Socius and Civis Bononiae (14th-16th centuries), and several manuscripts from seventeenth-century France and Germany. In a treatise from seventeenth-century Calabria, Gioachimo Greco exerted a profound influence in France and Italy. The White Collection has 49 examples of his popular literary output, encompassing four original manuscripts, 19 manuscript copies, and 26 editions in six European languages. The study, Greco and His Manuscripts, was published by John G. White in Philadelphia in 1919. In 1616, Augustus II of Braunschweig-Luneberg, known by his pseudonym Gustavus Selenus, published his influential Das Schach- oder König-Spiel in Leipzig, Germany. The collection has two copies of the first edition, a copy of the 1722 edition, and an eighteenth-century manuscript in German and French. In the eighteenth century, chess treatises appeared in great numbers in Western Europe. These works are comprehensively represented in the White collections. Notable authors include Joseph Bertin, Philiph Stamma, Francois A. D. Philidor, Elias Stein, Ercole del Rio, Domenico L. Ponziani, Johann Allgaier, and J. K. Kindermann. In the first half of the nineteenth century, treatises by J. H. Sarratt, William Lewis, Howard Staunton, John Cochrane, George Walker, and William S. Kenny were published in Great Britain. The Collection includes the complete works of Lewis, Staunton, and Cochrane, several printed in folio. There are 36 works on chess by George Walker, including four of his manuscripts. Nineteenth-century German authors are well represented with works from the Berliner Schachgesellschaft (an amateur club established in the 1830s) by P.R. von Bilguer, Baron Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa, van der Linde, and L.E. Bledow and the influential later nineteenth-century writers. Thirteen works by A. Anderssen, 19 analytical works of M. Lange, and 50 editions of J. Dufresne's treatises are part of the collection. The American Paul Morphy's treatise on the game of chess was first published in French and in German in 1859. These editions and subsequent translations into English, Italian, Swedish, Russian, and Spanish are all in the collection. |
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Tournament
Records, Periodicals. Tournament records,
journals, newsletters, and books on chess are
often ephemeral in nature and unlisted in
standard bibliographic sources. Dealers, private
collectors, and occasionally chess federations
have helped the Cleveland Public Library keep the
chess and checkers collections up-to-date.
Published tournament records and substantial
ephemeral tournament documents are cataloged in
the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC). Small or
unsubstantial tournament bulletins are arranged
alphabetically by place under the year in which
the contest was held. Records of tournaments
exist from the mid-nineteenth century to the
present day. With the twentieth century, publications of chess handbooks proliferated, and a great number of historical works, treatises on advanced techniques, and the works of grand masters on their applications of strategic principles were introduced. To illustrate the depth and breadth of holdings it is sufficient to mention that Capablanca's Chess Fundamentals alone is represented in seven editions in addition to five translations into Russian, Jagataic, and Spanish. Also included is a rich array of historical and current periodicals. Current subscriptions include over 200 titles, among them Deutsche Schachzeitung (from 1846 to date ); British Chess Magazine (from 1881 to date ); Tidskrift for Schack (Stockholm, from 1895 to date); and Schweizerische Schachzeitung (from 1900 to date). The ceased periodical holdings include the first chess magazine in the world, Le Palamede (Paris, 1836-39 and 1842-47); the first English chess magazine which was published in HollandSissa(Wijk bij duurstede, 1847-1874); and Shakhmatnyi Viestnik (Moscow, 1913-16). There are over 1,300 ceased and current chess and checkers periodical titles in the collection. |
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Other
Works. Works not specifically on chess
but that have substantial mention of the game
range from religious, literary, and historical
subjects through the sciences to Agatha Christie
detective stories. There are several special
collections of these titles developed as
auxiliary by-products of the chess collection.
Because of their completeness, emphasis on early
imprints, or rarity of materials included, these
collections are often invaluable to researchers,
bibliographers, or historians in humanistic
disciplines. One of the earliest and best-known medieval moralities pertaining to chess is Jacobus de Cessolis' De Ludo Scacchorum, or the Game of Chess, a text devoted to his counsel on the duties of men in a variety of occupations. He utilized the chess pieces to symbolize moral qualities and social order. His sermon was so influential that it was translated from Latin into the full range of European languages, including Czech. The White Collection has over 35 versions of this work, including eight manuscripts and six incunabula (books printed in the fifteenth century). The manuscripts date from the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries. The incunabula holdings are in Latin, Dutch, German, and Italian, four of them owned exclusively by the White Collection. In addition to the original manuscripts, the White Collection owns four facsimilies and photographic copies of Cessolis manuscripts housed in Paris, Rouen, and London libraries. Most of the incunabula holdings of the chess collection fall into the category of moralities, philological works, poetry with a chess theme, literature of games, philosophical works, collections of romances and tales in the Geste genre, Latin texts of Renaissance authors with chess themes, as well as early books on the game of chess. There are 32 volumes with 36 incunabula in the chess collection. In addition to the already mentioned Cessolis editions, chess-related incunabula of moralities include the works of Sebastian Brandt, Bartholomaeus de Chaimis, Pope Innocent III, and John of Wales (also known as Johannes Gallensis). John of Wales' Summa Collationum is represented in five fifteenth-century editions, including the Cologne 1470 imprint, the earliest printed text on chess. Philological works include texts by Wenzeslaus Brack and Jacopo Publicio. The Gesta Romanorum is the best developed incunabula collection, consisting of nine imprints. Johannes de Breitenbach's treatise on the lawfulness of chess and other games and Louis de Lucena's Salamanca 1496 imprint of the Arte de axedres number among the fifteenth century editions. Some other chess-related special collections include the allegorical poem Les Echech Amoreux; the twelfth-century romance of Floire et Blanchfleur; the sixteenth-century I1 Libro del cortegiano; the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, often regarded as one of the most beautiful early printed books; Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel; Franklin's Morals of Chess, Tegner's Fifthiof's Saga; the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and France Sacchetti's Delle Novelle. Many of the titles included in the chess-related works also reflect the collecting interests of either the folklore or Orientalia sections. Their lavish inclusion in first editions, early imprints, translations, and limited editions is the basis of the Library's distinguished rare holdings used by the international research community. |
Cf. "John
G. White and His Collection of Chess and
Checkers at the Cleveland Public Library,"
by Alice N.Loranth (Department Head of the Fine
Arts and SpecialCollections at Cleveland Public
Library, 1985-1997)
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