Wednesday, 25 May 2016

Junior Chess




Following on from the previous article, The Chess Education Society also published a short lived magazine Junior Chess.

Betts 7-119 gives some incomplete information on this scarce periodical including publication dates of 1949 to 1951.

The Royal Library at The Hague had only nos. 1 and 4 for January and July 1949 when the LN Catalogue was published in 1955.

Chess Periodicals by Di Felice, published in 2010, item 1228, simply repeats the information from Betts word for word and notes the two issues in LN.

There are no copies in either the British Library or the Cleveland Public Library which houses the J.G.White Collection.

However, the online catalogue of the Koninklije Bibliotheek gives full details and states that this magazine ran from no. 1 for January 1949 to no. 12 for March 1952, and that the library now has the full set.

No. 1 inside front cover
No. 1 front cover





















I have issues 1 to 6, 9 and 11. Unfortunately issues 1 to 6 are joined together so that the front cover of no. 2 is stuck to the back cover of no. 1 and the front cover of no. 3 is stuck to the back cover of no. 2 and so on. This means that I can see the front cover of no. 1 and the back cover of no. 6 but none of the other front or back covers. I do not know if there is any way that these could be successfully seperated. 

No. 4 inside front cover
No. 6 back cover





















The content is a mixture of instruction on various elements of the game, annotated games, problems, junior chess news and some book recommendations.

The magazine uses the descriptive notation although the editor was entirely in favour of the algebraic notation, `it being more logical, economical and would be a big saving in space and costs.´ However, `as all juniors use the English (Descriptive) Notation as do current books and magazines´ the editor decided `not to be pioneers and reformers in this respect.´

D.J.Morgan was  the editor  of nos. 1 to 9 but, due  to his  long   term illness,  W. Ritson Morry stepped in temporarily in 1951 before handing over to R.G.Wade, and possibly L.W.Barden, for the final 3 issues.


No. 9 inside front cover
No. 9 page 25


No. 11 front cover
No. 11 back cover



Update, October 2017.

A correspondent has pointed out that another magazine with the title Junior Chess was published between 1961 and 1964 (and possibly further). This is Betts 7-130 and was edited by John Hodgkins and John Love. I have just one issue of this magazine.

 
                                                           © Michael Clapham  

2 comments:

  1. You'll no doubt be aware that there was another periodical in the UK called "Junior Chess", which ran from 1961 to the end of 1964. Edited jointly by John F Love and John Hodgkins. Got any of those?

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    1. I have just one issue of Junior Chess by Hodgkins and Love and I have included a picture in the above article.

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