Remembering Mary Rudge (06-ii-1842 22-xi-1919)

[John Upham]

Probably a name only known to the serious chess history buff...

Mary Rudge was the first woman member of the Bristol Chess Club in 1872.

Amongst other achievements she was a winner of the first Women’s International Chess Congress under the management of the Ladies’ Chess Club of London in conjunction with the Women’s Chess Club of New York.



Remembering Mary Rudge (06-ii-1842 22-xi-1919)

mary rudge.jpg

[Tim Harding]

Forumites with access to the online edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography might like to look at the article about Mary Rudge which I wrote several years ago.
She is also mentioned several times in my history of correspondence chess, starting pages 89-90.

[John Upham]

Forumites with access to the online edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography might like to look at the article about Mary Rudge which I wrote several years ago.
She is also mentioned several times in my history of correspondence chess, starting pages 89-90.

Thanks Tim.

https://www.oxforddnb.com/search?q=Mary ... earch=true is the link I presume.

[Tim Harding]

I suppose that most if not all UK (and many non-UK) university libraries and most large UK public libraries, when they reopen, will have access to the online ODNB. Otherwise readers would need to purchase a personal subscription.

Unless the system has changed since I contributed, ODNB do two updates a year of the 2004 printed edition, adding articles on people who died since the original cut-off date, and also articles on other people originally not included, usually thematically related.
So a few years ago they added various people on a sporting theme to which I contributed articles about Isidor Gunsberg and Captain Evans as well as Mary Rudge, plus some corrections to articles on some chess players who were in the printed volumes.

All the chess players who were in the original DNB are included in ODNB with some revision but not all the factual mistakes were fixed; the person who did the revisions was probably not in a position to detect them.
I know that some of the corrections I suggested (in 2009 and later) have been made but am not currently able to view the online ODNB so I don't know if they have added articles on any chess players who have died in recent years.

There are still some changes that could be made to the older articles. For example, I was able to supply H. E. Bird's correct birth year and identify his wife but only later Hans Renette found out when she died.
I think Steinitz was not included in the original DNB (and so not in ODNB) because his connection with the UK was not considered sufficiently strong, though maybe that's something they might be persuaded to reconsider. I no longer have any contact with the editors.