Charles Ranken

British chess master and clergyman Charles Edward Ranken (5 January 1828 – 12 April 1905) was a Church of England clergyman and a minor British chess master. He co-founded and was the first president of the Oxford University Chess Club. He was also the editor of the Chess Player's Chronicle and a writer for the British Chess Magazine. Ranken is best known today as the co-author of Chess Openings Ancient and Modern (1889), one of the first important opening treatises in the English language. Education and religious career Ranken was born in Brislington, near Bristol, on 5 January 1828, son of Rev. Charles Ranken Sr. He learned chess at age 12, but first made a serious study of the game while attending Wadham College, Oxford University in 1847–50. He particularly devoted himself to study of Howard Staunton's The Chess-Player's Handbook (1847), a book that he said "marked the beginning of a new era in English chess literature". In 1867, Ranken became vicar at Sandford-on-Thames and lived at Oxford. He and Lord Randolph Churchill (Winston Churchill's father) founded the Oxford University Chess Club in April 1869, with Ranken becoming its first president. In 1871, he resigned his vi