Mary Rudge: Bristol’s World Chess Champion

By John Richards

Issue 13, Summer 2005 pp 33-37

‘She was “the leading lady player of the world” and “known throughout the length and breadth of the land” in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The pinnacle of her career was winning the first international women’s chess tournament in 1897, but she lived a life of genteel poverty and died almost forgotten. John Richards uncovers the extraordinary career of Mary Rudge and argues the case for a blue plaque to mark her achievements’.


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