Fabrizio Zavatarelli

Often buried in oblivion, Ignaz Kolisch (1837-1889) was one of the leading chess players in the period 1859-1867, before he became a bank director with some help from the Rothschild family and later on a "Baron von Kolisch" as well as an eminent chess patron. Fabrizio Zavatarelli has raised an outstanding chess literary monument to that most interesting, witty and charming personality. His deeply researched work contains 324 annotated Kolisch games, more than the double of the previously known fund, and he gives all found sources with their possible additional information. Moreover a lot of other coeval top chess masters are portrayed thus sketching a picture of the European chess scene at that time. Many diagrams, rare photographs, illustrations and drawings enrich the monograph which leaves a mark of excellence in the series of chess biographies by McFarland.

(R.B., I 2016)

A (tentative) high praise has been given by Edward Winter in his C.N. 9623.

June 2017: The publisher Messaggerie Scacchistiche has just issued a book, edited by our member Fabrizio Zavatarelli from Milan in Italy. The book contains an autobiography of Dubois, tens of his letters and about 300 of his games (all the specimens that could be found), with historical and modern annotations. A preview can be found here: http://www.messaggeriescacchistiche.it/serafino-dubois-quarantanni-di-scacchi-da-campione/.

Although Dubois' autobiography already appeared in print - with misprints and without notes different from Dubois' - the correspondence is an absolute novelty and many games are rather hard to seek out.