One of the best things the publisher Russell Enterprises does is to update and/or translate old chess books. They've reissued many of Alexander Alekhine's old works, Max Euwe's book on the 1948 World Championship match-tournament, Najdorf's book on the 1953 Candidates tournament, and so on. Now they've gone back to the first world champion, Wilhelm Steinitz (1836-1900; champion from 1894-1900), and reissued his classic work, The Modern Chess Instructor (MCI), originally published in 1889, together with its much shorter sequel/second part, published in 1895.
While today's chess primers are typically penned by club players (whether strong or middling), the first three world champions (Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, and Jose Raul Capablanca) all wrote such works. That said, it would be more accurate to call MCI a hybrid work. It begins as a primer, teaching the rules, chess notation, and chess terms. From there it proceeds with very theoretical remarks on a number of topics: how to improve, the nature of modern chess (winning and attacking should be based on exploiting weaknesses, not "brilliance"), and the value of the pieces, their relative strengths, and how to use them.
Having laid down this double foundation of the game's rules and laws, the remainder of the book - with a partial exception noted below - is an opening book devoted to the Open Games; i.e., those starting with 1.e4 e5. For each opening covered, there is first a theoretical section, which is followed by a number of illustrative games. The opening chapters are on the Ruy Lopez; the "Double Ruy Lopez" (i.e. the Spanish Four Knights with 4...Bb4), Three and Four Knights' Game; the "Scotch Gambit" (i.e. the Scotch, in contemporary parlance); the Two Knights' Defense; Petroff's Defense; Philidor's Defense; the Ponziani Opening; and the Giuoco Piano.
The last two openings constitute Part II, and - here's the exception noted in the first sentence of this paragraph - Part I ends with "The Contest Between Messrs. Steinitz and Chigorin." In it, he presents and analyzes all 17 of their games from their first world championship match, played in Havana in 1889. (Steinitz won with the score of ten wins, six losses, and - incredibly - just one draw, played in the last game of the match.) The reason it's only a partial exception is that while Steinitz played 1.Nf3 in every game (almost invariably met by 1...d5 2.d4 Bg4), all of Chigorin's White games began with 1.e4 e5, and all but one of them was an Evans Gambit. Right after the match they continued their opening duel in a series of three consultation games, and those are presented as well.
That, in summary, is what's in the book. Now for a utilitarian question (or two): who cares, other than chess history buffs? Why should we have any interest in opening theory that's almost 130 years old? I'll start my answer with reference to a couple of players far greater than all or almost all readers of this blog: eight-time Candidate Lajos Portisch and Bobby Fischer himself. From Portisch's new book, My Secrets in the Ruy Lopez (from the start of chapter 2):
I am extremely surprised whenever a young player - maybe even a grandmaster - recites like a shot the codes of various openings [ECO codes - DM], but meanwhile he has possibly not thoroughly analysed any of Steinitz's games in the Ruy Lopez. Again, I have to quote from Fischer: "Lajos! How many Steinitz games did you study?" After a short reflection I answered: "About one hundred." His answer came immediately: "I did one thousand"....
The point is that I suggest to everybody who wants to learn: do not forget about the once greatest players. Not only for the sake of decency, but also because the work invested will be fruitful sooner or later.
One might think this is nuts: why would the greatest player of all time until (at least) the start of Garry Kasparov's peak years brag about looking at the theoretically archaic games of a player much weaker than himself? A few things can be said in reply, not least of which is that Fischer became the greatest player in history up to that time in part because he looked at all those old games (and not just Steinitz's, but those of all his great predecessors - to coin a phrase). It gave him a diverse chess education. Additionally, there were some gems in Steinitz's play that had fallen under the radar. The best-known example was 9.Nh3 in the Two Knights, which may now be White's primary weapon in that opening.
Of course plenty of Steinitz's ideas were simply bad. That's true of all generations: some opening ideas stand the test of time, others don't, and some survive with a little tweaking. And many ideas which have been proved to fail took many hours of human effort, or the work of powerful chess engines, to prove their inadequacy. Over the board, as a surprise weapon, they could turn out to be perfectly viable.
I present some ideas from the book here as a series of quiz positions; for now, I'll note that while the book isn't for everyone, it is of more than antiquarian interest - as I hope you'll see for yourself as you work on the quiz. The positions were chosen almost at random, and offer only a tiny fraction of the material in the book. I'll post some solutions in a few days; for now, enjoy!