Author: François-André Danican Philidor (1726-1795) inscribed by Efim Bogoljubow
Year: 1779
Publisher: Carl Wilhelm Ettinger
Place: Gotha
Description:
2 parts bound as one. 314+3 rules pages with frontispiece portrait. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5") bound in full leather with four raised spine bands with leather labels in compartments lettered in gilt. Translated by Schack Hermann Ewald. From the Lothar Schmid chess library. With handwritten dedication to Jens Enevoldsen by the Russian-German grandmaster Efim Bogoljubow. (van der Linde 479) Rare German edition.
François-André Danican Philidor was a French composer and chess player. He contributed to the early development of the opéra comique. He is regarded as the best chess player of his age; his book Analyse du jeu des Échecs was considered a standard chess manual for at least a century. Philidor started playing regularly around 1740 at the chess Mecca of France, the Café de la Régence. It was also there that he famously played with a friend from New England, Benjamin Franklin. The best player in France at the time, Legall de Kermeur, taught him. At first, Legall could give Philidor rook odds, a handicap in which the stronger player starts without one of his rooks, but in only three years, Philidor equaled and then surpassed him. Philidor visited England in 1747 and decisively beat the Syrian Phillip Stamma in a match, although Philidor let Stamma have the first move in every game and scored all draws as wins for Stamma.
Efim Dmitriyevich Bogoljubow (1889-1952) was a Russian-born German chess player who played two matches against Alexander Alekhine for the world championship.
Jens Evald Enevoldsen-Elsing (1907-1980) won the Danish Chess Championship five times (1940, 1943, 1947, 1948, and 1960). In 1939 he shared first but lost a playoff, and in 1950 he again shared first but lost a lottery. He took 4th place at the Helsinki 1947 zonal tournament; Eero Böök and Gösta Stoltz shared first place.
Lothar Maximilian Lorenz Schmid (1928-2013) was a German chess grandmaster. He was born in Radebeul near Dresden into a family who were the co-owners of the Karl May Press, which published the German Karl May adventure novels. He was best known as the chief arbiter at several World Chess Championship matches, in particular the 1972 encounter between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky at Reykjavic. He was also an avid collector of chess books and paraphernalia. It was reputed that he owned the largest known private chess library in the world, as well as a renowned collection of chess art, chess boards and chess pieces from around the globe.
Condition:
Some foxing and toning to pages. New Binding. Dedication by Paul Horlbog to Bogoljubow on the inside cover. Handwritten note on endpaper. Book block secured with strips of paper. Dedication by Bogoljubow "To the dear master Enevoldsen, Copenhagen As a reminder! E. Bogolyubov. Flensburg, October 1947." A very good rare copy with highly unusual provenance.