My fifth Sport in History article (2024) examined the history of de la Bourdonnais and McDonnell’s great chess match in the nineteenth century - ‘Still and dark assemblies’: the narrativised chess-player in urban & literary culture, 1834–1864 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

My fourth Sport in History article ‘The machine being set in motion’: the automaton chess-player in urban & literary culture, 1839–1851' (2021), examined leisure & sporting practices, and themes of curiosity & respectability, in relation to the famous automaton: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

My third Sport in History article (2018) considered George Walker’s historical-fiction ‘A Night in York – A Chess Adventure of 1842’, in which the author imagines a night-time meeting with a ghostly medieval chess-player 👻 www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

My second Sport in History article (2017) considered nineteenth-century blindfold chess-play and its intersection with themes of (again) respectability and monstrosity: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

My first article (Sport in History, 2015) looked at George Walker's essay on the Café de la Régence and the way chess-play could become entangled with themes of respectability: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

My long-term research project is an examination of George Walker's 'Chess and Chess-Players' essays (1850). So far I've written five articles for Sport in History on the Café de la Régence, blindfold chess-playing, the automaton chess-player, a ghostly chess-player, & on how chess-play was recorded.

In the spirit of new beginnings, I’ll try to summarise my research on chess & chess-players over the next few days & post links to it. To start, here’s my academia page: lancaster.academia.edu/JohnSharples

Staying warm 🧤

Feel Good Club in Manchester

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Here’s some more info on my 2017 book ‘Minds, Machines, & Monsters: A Cultural History of Chess-Players’ - manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781784994204/

The BSSH 2025 Annual Conference will be held at the University of Ulster (www.ulster.ac.uk/campuses/bel...). It runs from 20th to 22nd August 2025, and the call for papers will be announced in the new year. Please contact Katie Taylor at [email protected] for further information.

Anybody can now read my new article on the history of de la Bourdonnais and McDonnell’s great chess match in the nineteenth century - ‘Still and dark assemblies’: the narrativised chess-player in urban & literary culture, 1834–1864 #chess #history t.co/EQgWqMAIkR

Lancaster Castle