The Archives of Jeremy Gaige
Jeremy Gaige (October 9, 1927 – February 19, 2011) was a devoted and meticulous chess archivist for more than three decades. He is best remembered for his four-volume compendium of chess crosstables (Philadelphia: Gaige Private Printing: 1969, 1971, 1972, and 1974) and for his Chess Personalia – A Biobibliography (MacFarland: 1987), which contains basic biographical data on chess players.
Prior to his death, Gaige gifted two cartons (containing 11 research binders) to well-known Chess Game Historian and Preservationist Andy Ansel. After his death, the remainder of Gaige’s archive, nine cartons of binders, were forwarded to Fred Wilson, the prominent New York City chess book dealer. Fred forwarded all of the remaining 67 binders to Jon Edwards, the 32nd World Correspondence Champion. Jon has a PhD in History from Michigan State University.
Jon and Andy then collaborated to bring this archive back into prominence.
Our goal is to preserve and scan the records of this archive and to share the contents with the entire chess community. Sadly, Gaige’s word processing data files were not preserved. Apart from his publications and monographs, the pages in the archive are all that remains of Gaige’s lifelong efforts.
Most of the letter-quality monographs in the archive contain Gaige’s hand-written comments, additions, and corrections. The archives also contain the voluminous records and photocopies from which he derived the publications. Gaige intended to update his crosstable research through to the 1980s, but illness overtook his efforts in or around 1995. As Gaige had put it, he needed three lifetimes to complete the work.
We are pleased to reveal that Gaige continued to revise his publications and so, the archive reflects his many updates to the existing publications. In addition, there are numerous, previously unknown monographs, most of which have now been scanned.