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T.R. Dawson: Five Classics of Fairy Chess

T. R. Dawson, one of the great early Fairy Chess problem composers, wrote five books in the C. M. Fox series on Fairy Chess. Dover Publications brought all five titles together in one volume, called Five Classics of Fairy Chess.

The separate titles that were bundled are:

  1. Caissa's Wild Roses
  2. C. M. Fox, His problems
  3. Caissa's Wild Roses in Clusters
  4. Ultimate Themes
  5. Caissa's Fairy Tales
The books were originally published in 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, and 1947. The total number of pages of the books in 145. The books contain many fairy chess problems, in the first, second and third book treated in a methodical way; in the last with some amusing stories attached to them. The fourth book contains mainly `task problems', e.g., a mate in two problem with 18 different mates after one answer to the key move; or a position with a maximum number of legal moves possible. The second book is dedicated to problems of C. M. Fox.

For a price of not more than approximately $10, you have with this book lots and lots of fairy chess problems and information about fairy chess, from one of the most influential fairy chess composers of all times. For in introduction to fairy chess problems, this book might be an idea: it is well written, not expensive, and often quite entertaining. However, the book is already quite old, so it probably doesn't cover some modern trends in fairy chess (but, as I'm also just starting to look at these types of chess problems, I cannot judge this).

Some useful facts: published by Dover, 1973, ISBN 0-486-22910-6, price $9.90 (I think). The book was, January 1996, still for sale, although the first bookshop I ordered the book stated that it was sold out. I ordered the book online from Amazon Com, who charged $10.85 plus postage - this was a little bit more than the official list price for the book.


Written by: Hans Bodlaender
WWW page created: January 6, 1997.