A Collection of Two Hundred Chess Problems ... including the Problems to which the Prizes were awarded by the Committees of the

xii+266 pages with frontispiece and diagrams. Small octavo (7 1/2" x 5 1/4") issued in red cloth with gilt lettering to spine and blind stamped cover. Solution at the back. From the library of Rimington Wilson. (van der Linde: 1091; Betts: 33-38) First edition.

Frank Healey was a famous English chess player, but above all a composer of chess problems. He published in 1866 a collection of 200 chess own compositions, which he regarded as decidedly aesthetic, indeed poetic achievements. "Problems are true poetry of chess. The same depth of imagination, the same keen perception of beauty, the same fertility of invention, we ask the poet, can be found in another form in the humble labors of problem composers. Certainly one can say, without the analogy to span that the 32 stones representing the alphabet of the composer, while the chess is his paper, and finally resulting positions can be quite compared with as many stanzas."

James Wilson Rimington-Wilson (1822-1877) was one of the great collectors of books about chess, as well as books about other games and sports. He was a strong amateur chess player and records of some of his games survive, including a victory over Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official world champion of chess. Rimington-Wilson developed an extensive gaming library, which was maintained and perhaps added to by his son, Reginald Henry Rimington-Wilson (1852-1927). After the death of R. H., his son Captain H. E. Rimington-Wilson (1899-1971) ordered the sale of the library by auction at Sotheby's. It was the Quaritch firm that purchased the vast majority of the Rimington-Wilson lots at Sotheby's. They offered the books in two catalogues shortly after the sale.

Condition:

Lightly soiled, corners bumped, light rubbing to extremities, James Wilson Rimington-Wilson's signature on front paste down, spine darkened. A very good copy.