The Chess Literature of Australia and New Zealand

Publisher: Ken Whyld Association, 2018, Pages: 252, Hardcover

"4th Edition"

This bibliography of chess literature of Australia and New Zealand was published in autumn 2011 by Academic Mind, Belgrade. Bob Meadley and Paul Dunn had delivered the manuscript of the 4th edition whose publication was a quite long haul. More about that in the "Foreword of the Editor" reproduced below:

Early in 2006 our member Paul Dunn from "Down Under" contacted Michael Negele, who was at that time Chairman of the Ken Whyld Association. Paul and his coauthor Bob Meadley needed sympathetic support for a new printed edition of the late John van Manen's Biblio-graphy of the Australian and New Zealand Chess Literature (the last update by the author was in 1989). Our Australian friends had worked on that project for some time, and an electronic version (already finalized in 2003) was generously sent to Michael.

In principle the KWA board agreed during the La Tour-de-Peiltz assembly on giving financial support to the project, however quite a lot of concerns had to be overcome during the following years. Especially some mixed experiences with our "Obliged to Tradition …" bibliography caused significant reluctance by the KWA in taking on the role and responsi-bilities of a publisher.

Meanwhile Paul and Bob continued their work and provided a very presentable manuscript (counted as the 4th edition) in the summer of 2009. With only minimal changes (with regard to contents) still to be made, a positive reply was promptly given by the new KWA Board.
But again the realization was delayed, at that time KWA was simply missing the manpower necessary for the consistent pursuit of this project. Particularly we both (Ralf Binnewirtz and Michael Negele) were heavily involved with the finalization of the great Lasker monograph until nearly the end of 2009. This workload made it practically impossible to invest time and effort on an additional publication.

In the spring of 2010 it was decided that the original text still needed a proper layout, and a concluding proof-reading should prove to be necessary as well. As a consequence it was not before end of June 2010 i.e. after the Antwerp assembly, that Ralf Binnewirtz was officially tasked to complete the layout work.

Besides, after changing the format from A5 to A4 a complete revision of the index was necessary, and all the colored pictures in the book also had to be reworked in order to have a sufficiently high resolution for the final printing. It was thought that these efforts could be finished by the beginning of October 2010. Hereafter it again took some months before a final proof-reading could be done.

In April 2011 our member Dr. Leonard Skinner had kindly offered to deal with it, and in the shortest time he had completed this task. We express our sincere thanks to our comrade from Wales, who supported us for the fifth time in such a bibliographical publication.

The Ken Whyld Association also wants to thank Prof. Dušan Drajic from Belgrade who had agreed to undertake the printing and binding with his printer. These favorable conditions provided by our Serbian friend helped the KWA considerably to take on the burden of a publisher again. So we extend our thanks to the publisher Academic Mind, in particular to Aleksandar Raškovic, as well as to the printing office Planeta Print, all from Belgrade.

Last but not least the KWA Board would like to pay tribute to the two authors for all their patience and together with our Australian friends we hope that this bibliography will be helpful to all collectors, bibliophiles, researchers and libraries concerned with chess, its literature and its history.
Ralf Binnewirtz and Michael Negele,
on behalf of the Board of the Ken Whyld Association October 2011