Nouvelle Maniere de Jouer aux Echecs

xxxii+163 pages with half-title and engraved title,. Small octavo (7 1/2" x 4 1/2" bound in half white leather with spine labels in brown with gilt letter over marbled boards. (Bibliotheca Van der Linde-Niemeijeriana: 425) First Dutch edition.

Philipp Stamma, an Assyrian native of Aleppo, Ottoman Syria, later resident of England and France, was a chess master and a pioneer of modern chess. His reputation rests largely on his authorship of the early chess book Essai sur le jeu des echecs published 1737 in France (English translation: The Noble Game Of Chess 1745). This book brought the Middle Eastern concept of the endgame to the attention of Europe and helped revive European interest in the study of the endgame.

Stamma was a regular at Slaughter's Coffee House in St Martin's Lane, London, a center of 18th-century English chess, and was considered one of England's strongest players. He was defeated quite handily by Philidor in a famous match in 1747, which marked the beginning of Philidor's rise to fame.

Condition: modern binding with new end papers, untrimmed,