Caissa's Fairy Tales

37 pages with diagrams. Quarto (10" x 7") bound in original publisher's green wrappers with black lettering to front wrapper. C M Fox Fairy Series, number 5). (Betts: 39-20) First edition.

Thomas Rayner Dawson was an incredibly active problemist: inventor of many fairy pieces (Grasshopper, Nightrider, etc) and conditions, composer of thousands of problems (fairy, directmates, selfmates, endings), founder-editor of "The Problemist" and of "The Problemist Fairy Chess Supplement" which became "The Fairy Chess Review", writer of numerous books and problem collections.

An inspection of his study and what he left behind helps us to realize the scale and scope of his non-professional activities, the great collection of thousands of classified fairy chess problems in twenty filing cabinets, six more of orthodox chess problems and mathematics, his own problems in fifteen loose leaf binders, a binder with a sheet for every FCR solver, recording solving scores; two further books of cross references by classification to all his chess problems and to the puzzles and problems of numerous types of which he had a large collection; five ms. quarto note books on pure geometry, in effect the solutions of over a thousand geometry problems, all beautifully set out: three large quarto ms. books, "Notes on the Theory of Numbers"; five volumes of chess problem "stories" from which Caissaâ's Fairy Tales appear to have been compiled

Condition:

Corners bumped, some sunning to edges, lightly soiled else a very good copy.