Later life

Staunton continued writing the chess column in Illustrated London News until his death in 1874, greeting new developments with enthusiasm. In 1860 he published Chess Praxis, a supplement to his 1847 work The Chess Player's Handbook. The new book devoted 168 pages to presenting many of Morphy's games and praised the American's play. Five years later Staunton published Great Schools of England (1865), whose main subject was the history of major English public schools but which also presented some progressive ideas: learning can only take place successfully if the active interest of the student is engaged; corporal punishment is to be avoided and fagging should be abolished. But most of his later life was occupied in writing about Shakespeare, including: a photolithographic reproduction of the 1600 Quarto of Much Ado about Nothing in 1864 and of the First Folio of Shakespeare in 1866; and papers on Unsuspected Corruptions of Shakespeare's Text, published from 1872 to his death. All these works were highly regarded at the time. When he died suddenly of heart disease, on June 22, 1874, he was at his desk writing one of these papers. At the same time he was also working on his last chess book, Chess: Theory and Practice, which was published posthumously in 1876. A memorial plaque now hangs at his old residence of 117 Lansdowne Road, London W11. In 1997 a memorial stone bearing an engraving of a chess knight was raised over his grave at Kensal Green Cemetery in London, which had previously been unmarked and neglected