George H. D. Gossip - Chess Books and Articles

Chess Books and Articles

As of 1874, Gossip was the chess editor of The Hornet. In that year, after several years' work, he published his magnum opus, The Chess-Player's Manual—A Complete Guide to Chess. It was "a handsomely produced work with more than 800 of its 900 pages devoted to openings and illustrative games". The book became the subject of biting criticism, largely because Gossip had included 27 illustrative games that he had won against leading players of the day, and only 12 games that he had lost. Steinitz later wrote:

Mr Gossip had practiced the unfair ruse of carefully preserving stray skittles games which he had happened to win or draw, generally after many defeats, against masters whose public records stood far above his own, ... thus leading the public to believe that the author stood on a par with them, or was even their superior.

According to Diggle, this edition of the book "failed utterly". The harsh reception accorded it embittered Gossip against chess critics for the rest of his life.

In 1879, Gossip published Theory of the Chess Openings, a shorter work more in the style of Modern Chess Openings, which sold out within six months. The preface and the concluding chapter of the book bitterly attacked the critics who had savaged his earlier treatise. This time the critics, "while deploring 'the outside slices of Mr. Gossip's sandwich' ", praised the main body of the work. William Wayte in the Chess Players Chronicle called the book "fairly in possession of the field among English elementary treatises". Unfortunately for Gossip, he "was the victim of an act of gross piracy, as many copies forming no part of the edition printed by his orders were circulated in America and the 'pirates' never brought to justice."

While in Australia, Gossip wrote a chess column that appeared in Once a Month magazine from February to October 1885.

A new edition of The Chess-Player's Manual was published in 1888, this one with a 122-page appendix by Lipschütz. Steinitz wrote that "Mr Gossip has produced a useful work, which in some respects must be regarded even superior to that of Staunton or any other previous writers on the chess openings. ... But the most meritorious distinguishing feature of the Manual is the large collection of illustrative games by various first-class masters, and in that respect Mr Gossip's work stands second only to Signor Salvioli's Teoria e Pratica among the analytical works in any language." The following year, Steinitz cited it in The Modern Chess Instructor as one of the 12 principal authorities he had relied on in writing that treatise.

An anonymous reviewer in The New York Times called the new edition of The Chess-Player's Manual "probably the most convenient, trustworthy, and satisfactory chess book accessible in the English language". The reviewer concluded that the games and problems in the volume would "afford great entertainment" to the casual enthusiast, "while for real students of chess ... it is very nearly indispensable". He also praised "Mr. Lipschütz's appendix, which brings the development of the openings almost down to date". David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld write in The Oxford Companion to Chess that Lipschütz's appendix "helped to make this one of the standard opening books of the time". World Champion Bobby Fischer had a copy of The Chess-Player's Manual in his personal library, and cited it in his famous 1961 article "A Bust to the King's Gambit".

The June 1888 issue of Steinitz's International Chess Magazine contained an article by Gossip that Robert John McCrary calls "a very illuminating, important, and detailed account of the state of San Francisco chess". For the last few months of 1888 Gossip was listed as being on the "Editorial Staff" of the Columbia Chess Chronicle. Its December 29, 1888 issue contained a lengthy article by him entitled "Chess in the Present Day", which offered a broad sweep of chess history and the advances made by chess in the United States. Gossip called Paul Morphy and Steinitz "the two greatest chessplayers that have ever lived" and remarked that "no Englishman has yet attained, or probably ever will attain, to the eminence of chess champion of the world. ... The deep-thinking German, the brilliant Frenchman and the versatile American have always been too much for sober, stolid John Bull."

Gossip in 1891 published a second revised edition of his Theory of the Chess Openings, which Diggle calls "a handsome volume with an appendix of sixty-one pages". Characteristically, he devoted much of the appendix to criticizing his detractors and anticipating their further attacks.

Gossip also wrote the lesser-known chess books The Chess Players' Text Book (1889), The Chess-player's Vade Mecum and Pocket Guide to the Openings (1891), Modern Chess Brilliancies (1892), The Chess Player's Pocket Guide to Games at Odds (1893), The Chess Pocket Manual (1894), The Chess Player's Mentor (with Francis Joseph Lee, 1895), The Complete Chess-Guide (with Lee, 1903), Gossip's Vest-Pocket Chess Manual (date unknown; pictured at above left), and a collection of his own games, Games: G. H. D. Gossip versus Bezkrowny, Clerc, Donisthorpe, Gocher, Gunsberg, Hoffer, Owen, Sanders, Vines Played During the Last 10 Years in England & France (1882, with Gunsberg and Steinitz).