The Minor Tactics of Chess

For sale is The Minor Tactics of Chess: A Treatise on the Deployment of the Forces in Obedience to Strategic Principle by Franklin K. Young and Edwin C. Howell. London: Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly, 1895, printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. This is the English edition of the book first published in Boston in 1894. It’s illustrated with diagrams and a frontispiece photograph of Staunton chessmen.This is one of the earliest English-language attempts to teach chess strategy as a system. Young and Howell treat the pieces like an army, with bases, salients and “angles of resistance,” and they build the idea up one position at a time, with a diagram for each. John Barry called it “one of the finest contributions to the literature of chess and the most orderly guide for a tyro student.” The book is in descriptive notation (KP-K4, QP-Q3). It’s a good find for collectors of 19th-century chess instruction and for anyone who likes to see how strategy was taught before the modern masters.Condition: Good for its age. The maroon cloth binding is good. The cover is stamped in black, with red lettering for the authors’ names and black and red pawn borders. The cloth shows rubbing and soiling, with a few spots on both boards. The pages are clean and the diagrams are sharp, with only the light toning of age. Please see the photos.

Condition: Good.

One available.