The Gentleman’s Journal, 1869

The announcement was very terse: “[book as prize] for best set of six original chess problems”, together with the closing date.

While both The Gentleman’s Journal and Recreation Supplement had chess columns, no chess editor was identified until H. Meyer took up the post in March, 1870.

Apart from the winner, the judgement mentioned two competitors “with especial approval”. These have been identified as 'hm.' awards above, but no problems from these sets appear to be known.

Problem 5 in the winning set was later identified as faulty, with the suggestion that the white Bishop on d3 should be moved to g6. This, however, leads to a short solution and has been ignored here.


Dating of issues of The Gentleman’s Journal is problematic as no direct dates appear to be present. While there is a date on the issue cover, it does not change with each issue: the first five issues all have the date “November 1, 1869”, for example. We assume that it identifies the month and year that the issue was published (or planned to be published), but not necessarily the day.

The Recreation Supplement (initially called Monthly Supplement to ...) was published monthly, and has its own numbering of issues, pages and problems. It appears to share the same type of dating problems as the main Journal, though on a lesser scale.

This appears to be the only chess problem tourney/competition of The Gentleman’s Journal in which all problems of the winning set(s) were published.