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   Dr. Tim Harding   J. H. Blackburne     Paul Morphy   Correspondence Chess history book   Captain W. D. Evans

Hastings 1895: the sources

 

Two tournament books were published in 1896 and two more at the centenary of the event in 1995. These are:

We shall have more to say about all these when we discuss the problems with the record of the tournament in the next article.

The following local newspapers should have been in a good position to obtain accurate game scores and reports, either through their own reporting staff or from the Hastings Chess Club committee:

Hastings Advertiser, Hastings News, Hastings Observer, and the Hastings Times.

Several British national daily newspapers published reports while the tournament was in progress and immediately after its conclusion. In most cases, they were just borrowing from each other’s accounts (and possibly from a wire service provided by the Pres Association to which provincial newspapers subscribed). The following are those which we consider most likely to be reliable as they would probably have had correspondents present at Hastings during some or all of the rounds.

Morning Post (chess correspondent: Anthony Guest).
The Standard  (chess correspondent: Leopold Hoffer); NB: incorrectly listed under “Evening Standard” in the online British Newspaper Archive.
The Times (chess correspondent: Samuel Tinsley, one of the players in the tournament).
Additionally, the reports in the Daily News (which carried several reports and is mentioned by Schallopp as a source he used), and possibly other newspapers, may have had some reports from a “stringer” reporter present in Hastings.

Numerous weekly chess columns published reports and games during and soon after the event. The most important of these for Hastings 1895 were:
The Field (chess correspondent: Leopold Hoffer) which carried extensive reports.
Allgemeine Sportzeitung (of Vienna; chess correspondent Carl Schlechter) which published about 20% of the games from the tournament and can be considered authoritative at least for his own games scores and those of his friend Marco.

Schallopp wrote in his introduction that even before the official tournament book appeared: “About a third of the games were already known to me through the English daily press, as well as through the English, German, Dutch, and Danish chess newspapers and chess columns available to me.”

The most important chess magazines which are useful for a cross-check on game scores include:
British Chess Magazine (monthly).
The Chess-Monthly (but its editor Hoffer had mostly written these up already for The Field).
Deutsche Schachzeitung (monthly).
Deutsches Wochenschach (weekly)
It is somewhat surprising that Schallopp did not mention BCM or the Wochenschach in his introduction, although he presumably saw them. He did mention some German chess columns that he consulted and also two Dutch, one Swedish and one Danish publication in which he found game scores and notes. He did not say that he saw Schlechter's column so he probably did not.

Also worth noting is the following personal reminiscence of the tournament, published at the time by a Dutch journalist who competed in the amateur tournament at Hastings:
   van Lennep, Norman Willem, Hastings 1895

This is a book in Dutch, available in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. which was compiled from his reports for a Dutch magazine, the Tijdschrift van den Nederlandschen Schaakbond and later reprinted in Schaakbulletin. This includes player profiles and some games but cannot be considered a primary source for game scores.

 

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