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Paul Hugo Little
September 9, 2015
My first chess magazine was Chess Review. I had told a man down Louisa Street that I had been playing for a year or two and he gave me a big pile of CRs. He had forgotten to renew his subscription a few years earlier and January, February and March 1957 were missing. That incomplete year haunted me for three decades, until I finally got the missing issues. It also started my chess book collecting.
A writer that I came across there was Paul H. Little. I remember his article devoted to Akiba Rubinstein published in CR June of 1961. To get an idea of his style – the first paragraph of that in memoriam:
Akiba Rubinstein, December 12, 1882 – March, 1961
By Paul H. Little
“He was a Talmudic student from a poor family in Stawiski which moved to Lodz, Poland. Out of the ghetto he came, with a keen mind such as only poverty and adversity sharpen, And fate decreed that his assiduous and probing inclination should be turned aside from its pursuit of the ancient Jewish scriptures, to probe instead the mysteries of the board of 64 squares and the gyrations of the Caissic figurines set upon it. For, one day, this obscure youth, still in his early teens, wandered into a chess club. From that day forth, he was as if a weird dibbuk had taken possession of his soul – and so indeed it had: the dibbuk of chess fanaticism.”
________
If that isn’t purple prose then I don’t know what is.
I’d seen a couple of his earlier efforts for Chess Review republished in anthologies and one in CHESS in 1975. Sometimes he was Paul Little, sometimes P.H. Little and it appears that there were dozens of other names, not so obvious.
The last time I heard of him was when I visited the John G. White Library in Cleveland and I asked one of the Special Collection librarians if anyone ever donated their book collections to the White Library. She said that they had boxes and boxes of papers from Paul H. Little.
The catalogue shows scrapbooks numbering 56 volumes, clippings and a scorebook of his games.
_______
What brought all this to mind was a recent article by batgirl in chess.com:
http://www.chess.com/article/view/th...ith-1000-names
From which I glean these biographical details:
Little, Paul H(ugo) [Marie De Jourlet, pseud.] (February 5, 1915 – June 22, 1987)
The author of more than seven hundred novels. Little was a Chicago native and lived there for most of his life. The son of Israel Isaac Litwinsky, a linen merchant, Little attended the University of Chicago (1932) and graduated from Northwestern University (BS, 1937).
After working in advertising in Chicago (1944-58), Little got a job as sales manager and announcer with KHIP-FM Radio in San Francisco (1959-61). He returned to Chicago for an account executive job with Chicago Car Advertising (1962-64) and afterwards was a full-time writer. Except for his 1937 novel, he wrote all of his many books after 1964. Publishing under many pseudonyms, Little’s work mostly falls into three genres: historical, pornographic, and romance.
He died on the same day as Howard Staunton, incidentally also on Paul Morphy's birthday, June 22, in 1987. Most of this information came from the Cleveland Public Library, which houses Little's chess scrapbooks and manuscripts.
For "CHESS" magazine, March 1975, Little contributed, "Baden-Baden 1870: The First Tourney Interrupted by War."
He wrote articles for "Chess Review," including but not limited to:
"The Nottingham International Masters Tournament," Sept. 1936
"He Talked a Good Game," March 1937
"An Interview with Dr. Lasker," January 1938
A Book Review of Fred Reinfeld's "Limited Editions Volume VIII: The Kemeri Tournament," June 1938
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills," Introduction Mar. 1939
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills, Kemeri 1937" June 1939
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills, Charousek-Tchigorin, Berlin 1897" Nov. 1939
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills, Tarrasch-Walbrodt, Vienna 1898" Jan. 1940
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills, Mattison-Spielmann, Carlsbad 1929" Feb. 1940
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills, Capablanca-Eliskases, Moscow 1936" Nov. 1940
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills, Schlecter-Janowski, Barmen 1905" Jan. 1941
"The Saga of Lasker," Feb. 1941
"Exciting Drawn Games," Mar. 1941
_______
He wrote of his chess accomplishments:
“Since 1938 I’ve played in a total of six tournaments, but I have won several Chess Review postal chess sections (Class A Rating) in the Forties, and have met a few of the world’s best over-the-board at simuls and in friendly games. I’m still proud of my draw a Pawn down in a Rook and Pawn ending with the late Sir George Thomas. I recall a friendly game with the last Emanuel Lasker, about eighteen years before his death, where I held out on the Black side of a Ruy Lopez for about 60 moves, losing by Zugzwang when a Pawn down. Not bad for a duffer.
I held my own with Lewis J. Issacs, Elias Gordon, and even Samuel D. Factor (losing, but never miserably), when this trio headed Chicago chess in the Forties. One of the games that delights me most is the one I played against Reuben Fine on Feb. 24, 1940, in his exhibition at Chicago's Covenant Club. He played 32 games simul [sic] and two blindfolded. I had Black in one of the blindfolded games and accepted the Queen's Gambit but soon found myself two Pawns down without compensation. With youthful bravado (I was then 25) I attacked; Fine transposed moves and I was able to force a draw.”
________
So there you have it. A writer not as talented in chess as Fred Reinfeld but certainly as prolific.
batgirl is to be commended on her writing. I suspect from the depth of her research and her knowledge that she is probably a man over 65.
One reader of the column speculates that she is Edward Winter!
September 9, 2015
My first chess magazine was Chess Review. I had told a man down Louisa Street that I had been playing for a year or two and he gave me a big pile of CRs. He had forgotten to renew his subscription a few years earlier and January, February and March 1957 were missing. That incomplete year haunted me for three decades, until I finally got the missing issues. It also started my chess book collecting.
A writer that I came across there was Paul H. Little. I remember his article devoted to Akiba Rubinstein published in CR June of 1961. To get an idea of his style – the first paragraph of that in memoriam:
Akiba Rubinstein, December 12, 1882 – March, 1961
By Paul H. Little
“He was a Talmudic student from a poor family in Stawiski which moved to Lodz, Poland. Out of the ghetto he came, with a keen mind such as only poverty and adversity sharpen, And fate decreed that his assiduous and probing inclination should be turned aside from its pursuit of the ancient Jewish scriptures, to probe instead the mysteries of the board of 64 squares and the gyrations of the Caissic figurines set upon it. For, one day, this obscure youth, still in his early teens, wandered into a chess club. From that day forth, he was as if a weird dibbuk had taken possession of his soul – and so indeed it had: the dibbuk of chess fanaticism.”
________
If that isn’t purple prose then I don’t know what is.
I’d seen a couple of his earlier efforts for Chess Review republished in anthologies and one in CHESS in 1975. Sometimes he was Paul Little, sometimes P.H. Little and it appears that there were dozens of other names, not so obvious.
The last time I heard of him was when I visited the John G. White Library in Cleveland and I asked one of the Special Collection librarians if anyone ever donated their book collections to the White Library. She said that they had boxes and boxes of papers from Paul H. Little.
The catalogue shows scrapbooks numbering 56 volumes, clippings and a scorebook of his games.
_______
What brought all this to mind was a recent article by batgirl in chess.com:
http://www.chess.com/article/view/th...ith-1000-names
From which I glean these biographical details:
Little, Paul H(ugo) [Marie De Jourlet, pseud.] (February 5, 1915 – June 22, 1987)
The author of more than seven hundred novels. Little was a Chicago native and lived there for most of his life. The son of Israel Isaac Litwinsky, a linen merchant, Little attended the University of Chicago (1932) and graduated from Northwestern University (BS, 1937).
After working in advertising in Chicago (1944-58), Little got a job as sales manager and announcer with KHIP-FM Radio in San Francisco (1959-61). He returned to Chicago for an account executive job with Chicago Car Advertising (1962-64) and afterwards was a full-time writer. Except for his 1937 novel, he wrote all of his many books after 1964. Publishing under many pseudonyms, Little’s work mostly falls into three genres: historical, pornographic, and romance.
He died on the same day as Howard Staunton, incidentally also on Paul Morphy's birthday, June 22, in 1987. Most of this information came from the Cleveland Public Library, which houses Little's chess scrapbooks and manuscripts.
For "CHESS" magazine, March 1975, Little contributed, "Baden-Baden 1870: The First Tourney Interrupted by War."
He wrote articles for "Chess Review," including but not limited to:
"The Nottingham International Masters Tournament," Sept. 1936
"He Talked a Good Game," March 1937
"An Interview with Dr. Lasker," January 1938
A Book Review of Fred Reinfeld's "Limited Editions Volume VIII: The Kemeri Tournament," June 1938
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills," Introduction Mar. 1939
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills, Kemeri 1937" June 1939
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills, Charousek-Tchigorin, Berlin 1897" Nov. 1939
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills, Tarrasch-Walbrodt, Vienna 1898" Jan. 1940
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills, Mattison-Spielmann, Carlsbad 1929" Feb. 1940
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills, Capablanca-Eliskases, Moscow 1936" Nov. 1940
"Famous Last Round Tourney Thrills, Schlecter-Janowski, Barmen 1905" Jan. 1941
"The Saga of Lasker," Feb. 1941
"Exciting Drawn Games," Mar. 1941
_______
He wrote of his chess accomplishments:
“Since 1938 I’ve played in a total of six tournaments, but I have won several Chess Review postal chess sections (Class A Rating) in the Forties, and have met a few of the world’s best over-the-board at simuls and in friendly games. I’m still proud of my draw a Pawn down in a Rook and Pawn ending with the late Sir George Thomas. I recall a friendly game with the last Emanuel Lasker, about eighteen years before his death, where I held out on the Black side of a Ruy Lopez for about 60 moves, losing by Zugzwang when a Pawn down. Not bad for a duffer.
I held my own with Lewis J. Issacs, Elias Gordon, and even Samuel D. Factor (losing, but never miserably), when this trio headed Chicago chess in the Forties. One of the games that delights me most is the one I played against Reuben Fine on Feb. 24, 1940, in his exhibition at Chicago's Covenant Club. He played 32 games simul [sic] and two blindfolded. I had Black in one of the blindfolded games and accepted the Queen's Gambit but soon found myself two Pawns down without compensation. With youthful bravado (I was then 25) I attacked; Fine transposed moves and I was able to force a draw.”
________
So there you have it. A writer not as talented in chess as Fred Reinfeld but certainly as prolific.
batgirl is to be commended on her writing. I suspect from the depth of her research and her knowledge that she is probably a man over 65.
One reader of the column speculates that she is Edward Winter!
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