Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess

by David Lawson, Thomas Aiello (Editor)

Overview

Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess is the only full-length biography of Paul Morphy, the antebellum chess prodigy who launched United States participation in international chess and is still generally acknowledged as the greatest American chess player of all time. But Morphy was more than a player. He was a shy, retiring lawyer who had been taught that such games were no way to make a living. The strain of his fame and the pull of his domineering family led Morphy to set another precedent: chess madness. Morphy's mental descent after retiring from chess became a part of his lore, made all the more magnanimous by a spate of twentieth-century examples. The Pride and Sorrow of Chess tells the full known story of the life of Paul Morphy, from his privileged upbringing in New Orleans to his dominance of the chess world, to the later tragedy of his demise. This new edition of David Lawson's seminal work, still the principal source for all Morphy biographical presentations, also includes new biographical material about the biographer himself, telling the story of the author, his opus, and the previously unknown life that brought him to the research.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935754428
Publisher:	University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press
Publication date:	02/18/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	430
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

David Lawson was a civil engineer and widower of the late Lost Generation poet Lola Ridge. He began his study of Paul Morphy in 1938 and would continue his obsessive quest to uncover the intricacies of the chess player’s life for the next four decades. He originally published the biography in 1976, when he was 89 years old. He died in 1980.

Thomas Aiello is an assistant professor of history at Valdosta State University. He is the editor of Dan Burley's Jive (Northern Illinois University Press, 2009) and the author of the forth coming Bayou Classic: The Grambling-Southern Football Rivalry (LSU Press, 2010) and The Kings of Casino Park: Race and Race Baseball in the Lost Season of 1932 (University of Alabama Press, 2011).