Description
Selkirk’s The Book of Chess is a comprehensive Victorian-era instructional manual aimed at the general player, covering rules, elementary tactics, openings of the Romantic period, illustrative games, problems, and guidance on practical play, including blindfold chess (a fashionable intellectual feat of the era). The work is pedagogical rather than original in theory, synthesising earlier English instructional traditions in the manner of Staunton-style manuals.
It also serves as a cultural document of mid-19th-century chess instruction in Britain, presenting the game as both an intellectual pursuit and a moral discipline, typical of Victorian didactic literature. While later superseded by more rigorous analytical works, it remains a solid representative compendium of period chess teaching and is collected primarily for its antiquarian and historical interest rather than for theoretical innovation.
Condition: Poor. Descriptive notation. Original publisher’s cloth, binding shaken and separated from the spine; contents complete, water damaged.
