The Sussex Chess Journal

[John Upham]

I'm not familiar with The Sussex Chess Journal but it would be nice if it was to be located in the UK.


http://www.chesslund.com/detail.asp?id= ... es-2-and-3

Anyone know about this publication?

[John Townsend]

John, Lund have some description of Sussex Chess Journal on the webpage which you gave, and Tim Harding wrote about it in his bibliography, British Chess Literature to 1914 (pages 169-171). What do you want to know about it?

[John Upham]

John, Lund have some description of Sussex Chess Journal on the webpage which you gave, and Tim Harding wrote about it in his bibliography, British Chess Literature to 1914 (pages 169-171). What do you want to know about it?

The auction claims is it rare and the current price is €490. Do you have a copy yourself?

[Gerard Killoran]

I'm not familiar with The Sussex Chess Journal but it would be nice if it was to be located in the UK.


http://www.chesslund.com/detail.asp?id= ... es-2-and-3

Anyone know about this publication?

Online here

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y-R ... &q&f=false

[Christopher Kreuzer]

While looking into the history of Walter Mead (the editor of this journal), I came across the following (probably familar to chess historians, but likely not to others):

- There is a Google Sites website called 'Carolus Chess' that draws on some articles by Walter Mead. I had not heard of Google Sites before, nor of the Carolus Chess website hosted there (I think you have to have a login of some sort).

- Chris Ravilious published a 14-page article 'Brighton's Public Chess Room, 1873-1914', which appeared in the periodical of the Sussex Archaeological Society in 1997 (the periodical has the grand title 'Sussex Archaeological Collections Relating to the History and Antiquities of the County'). Ravilious's article is available online here:

https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/li ... Id=3076486

Some absolutely fascinating social history there.

One of his sources is: W. Mead, 'A history of chess in Brighton', Chess Players' Chronicle, 20 September 1882.

Turning from Mead to the online scan from Google that Gerard pointed out, the owner of the book scanned there is named as a Eugene B. Cook, whose papers were deposited at Princeton University (he was from the Class of 1850). While Eugene B. Cook himself appears not to have attained any degree of fame or notoriety (EDIT: embarassingly, I wrote this before finding out how famous Cook was), there are what appear to be extensive archives that include a large number of chess papers:

https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/C0411

It is heartening to see such a lot of material preserved, though what will be of interest there is difficult to precisely identify. It does make me wonder who Cook was - his full name and years are: Cook, E.B. (Eugene Beauharnais), 1830-1915.

More on Cook here:

http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/CooK_NRU.html

Apparently he is incredibly famous in chess problemist circles and chess history in general, his skill at problem-solving is the origin of the term for a problem being flawed ('cooked'). His extensive chess library is part of the Princeton University collections.

[Does anyone know if Cook was related to the French aristocratic House of Beauharnais?]

[John Townsend]

No, John, I don't have a copy, but that is not surprising. As for its rarity, I couldn't find any in the British Library catalogue, but that may not mean much, as I recall many chess books were destroyed by enemy action in World War II. I didn't find any at Cambridge either.

[Brian Denman]

I have photocopies of the Sussex Chess Journal (1889-92) and its successor Southern Counties' Chess Journal (1892-96). There used to be copies of the former at Hastings Chess Club and in the Sussex chess archives, but the first of these may have been sold on and the Sussex archives went missing. Perhaps the only copy of the SCCJ was photocopied by Chris Ravilious from an American library. Walter Mead's history of chess in Brighton, which appeared in 1882, was not particularly long and was based on the Brighton CC minute book (1858-81), which still exists. However, Mead does not seem to have been aware of an earlier period of the club going back to 1842.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Just a post-script on the point I raised tangentially about the name of E. B. Cook (the chess problemist and player whose copies of the Sussex Chess Journal issues are available on Google Books courtesy of Princeton Univeristy). The blog I linked above reproduced an article from Harrie Grondijs (which itself reproduced the biographical sketch by W.R. Henry). Earlier, the blog author pondered on the French part of the name Eugene Beauharnais Cook:

http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/Eugene_d ... rnais.html

The name similarity can't be a coincidence, so we can probably assume his mother named him after Prince Eugene de Beauharnais.

And:

The mystery lies in why would such "American" minded people name their child after a European "Prince"?

Any ideas? Actually, I think the answer is in the output of his mother, as pointed out there:

According to Appletons Encyclopedia:

Mrs. Cook was for nearly two years, 1863-'4, editor of the "Continental Monthly," published in New York, and contributed many poems, sketches, and tales to that periodical. She was a good linguist, and translated several works from the German and French. Among these were Liszt's " Life of Chopin," translated from the French (Philadelphia, 1863); "The Undivine Comedy, and Other Poems," by Count Sigismund Krasinski, translated from the Polish through the German and French (1875); and "Life of Joan of Arc," from the German of Guido Goerres, published as a serial in the "Freeman's Journal."

It seems to me that Cook's mother was very much Contintental-minded, and a cultured linguist who would have been very likely to name her son after a French prince. I wonder, though, if that was the only connection? Probably not possible to say more without any further evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_El ... alker_Cook

[Tim Harding]

There is some confusion in above postings to this thread.
John Upham asked about the Sussex Chess Journal but most subsequent comments (including the Google link Gerard usefully provided) concern the Sussex Chess Magazine, an earlier and quite different publication, as I'm sure Brian Denman is aware.

The SCM magazine started after the end of H. W. Butler’s column in the Brighton Guardian. Walter Mead edited it and he stopped the magazine when he got a weekly column in the Southern Weekly News. Around the time that ended in 1889, the Sussex Chess Journal was begun, initially fortnightly, then monthly), the title of which changed to Southern Counties Chess Journal.

Walter Mead edited the 13 issues of the Sussex Chess Magazine fortnightly between 22 Nov 1882 and 9 May 1883.
Many years ago I was lent the Sussex Chess Association archive photocopy by Chris Ravilious. Subsequently I saw it in the Royal Dutch Library.

The Dutch library has only some issues of the subsequent Sussex Chess Journal (1889-1892) and Southern Counties Chess Journal (1893-Jan 1896) but they have been microfilmed by the John G White Collection in Cleveland, Ohio, and Chris Ravilious loaned me the Sussex Chess Association copies of the two films way back when.
More details can be found in my book referred to above and I may be able to answer questions later but right now I am going to watch the Ireland-France soccer match.