VERNEY, George Hope.

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Chess Eccentricities. First edition, the author's copy, interleaved with extensive autograph notes. Chess Eccentricities details chess variants invented by Verney and others, along with historic and local variants. Games for up to eight players are described, as are games played on atypically shaped boards. Verney's modifications were not universally popular; several of his notes indicate the good-natured controversy they inspired amongst chess aficionados.In 1881, Verney published a booklet on his version of the game of four-player chess, which was "met with such success" (p. v) that he followed it up with the encyclopaedic Chess Eccentricities. Some of the author's interleaved notes make careful alterations and additions to the text. Others contain further research in the form of transcribed articles from various journals, such as "Japanese Chess" from an 1875 issue of The Westminster Papers, and sections from books such as The famous game of Chesse-Play, 1614.Verney also transcribed some of his chess-related correspondence, which occasionally records respectful disagreements. An 1885 letter from the Rev. J. T. Howard, states of four-player chess that "the fact that it is for more than 2 players must prevent its being regarded as a serious game" (at pp. 41-43). Another, dated 1889 from one Dr. George Paddick, describes it as "destructive to the ordinary game in every way" and "the result of a sort of 'Darwinism' - evolution - […] natural selection, and the survival of the f

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