First edition. Illustrated throughout with black-and-white line drawings and decorations. (17). The book is divided into 20 chapters considering chess in various forms — in praise, in damnation, in poetry, in drama, in essays and philosophy, in biography and autobiography, in history, in historical fiction, in phantasy, humour, and even in the Proverbs. It is no time to be playing a chess when the house is on fire”.