Editing Wilhelm Steinitz (section)

===Personality===
[[Image:Wilhelm Steinitz.jpg|right|thumb|Steinitz]]
"Traditional" accounts of Steinitz describe him as having a sharp tongue and violent temper, perhaps partly because of his short stature (barely five feet) and congenital lameness.<ref name="SchoenbergGrandmasters" /><ref name="NYTimes1887OnSteinitz" /><ref name="Fine1952WorldsGreatChessGames" /> He admitted that "Like the Duke of Parma, I always hold the sword in one hand and the olive branch in the other",<ref name="WinterSteinitzQuotes" /> and under severe provocation he could become abusive in published articles.<ref name="WinterChessWithViolence">{{cite web | url=http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/violence.html | title=Chess with Violence | author=Winter, E. }}</ref> He was aware of his own tendencies and said early in his career, "Nothing would induce me to take charge of a chess column ...Because I should be so fair in dispensing blame as well as praise that I should be sure to give offence and make enemies."<ref>{{cite book
| author=MacDonnell, G.A. | title=The Knights and Kings of Chess | location=London | year=1894 | pages=39–40
| url=http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter15.html#3974._The_Steinitz-Wormald-MacDonnell_ | access-date=2008-11-19
}}</ref> When he embarked on chess journalism, his brutally frank review of Wormald's ''The Chess Openings'' in 1875 proved him right on both counts.<ref name="WinterChessNotesArchive15">{{cite journal
| journal=City of London Chess Magazine
| author=Steinitz, W. | title=(review of Wormald's ''The Chess Openings'')
|date=November 1875 | pages=297–304
}} and {{cite journal
| journal=City of London Chess Magazine
| author=Steinitz, W. | title=(review of Wormald's ''The Chess Openings'')
|date=December 1875 | pages=331–36
}} Extracts at {{cite web
| url=http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter15.html#3974._The_Steinitz-Wormald-MacDonnell_
| title=Chess Note 3974: The Steinitz–Wormald–MacDonnell controversy | author=Winter, E. | access-date=2008-11-19 }} Winter concludes his commentary with, "If instances can be identified of Steinitz being wrong in his denunciation of Wormald, we should like to be informed."</ref>

His personal correspondence, his own articles and some third-party articles, however, show that he had long and friendly relationships with many people and groups in the chess world, including [[Ignác Kolisch]] (one of his earliest sponsors), [[Mikhail Chigorin]], [[Harry Nelson Pillsbury]],<ref name="chessvilleSteinitzPapers" /> [[Bernhard Horwitz]], [[Amos Burn]]<ref name="WinterSteinitzQuotes">{{cite web | url=http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/steinitz.html | title=Steinitz Quotes | author=Winter, E. }}</ref> and the Cuban and Russian chess communities.<ref name="LandsbergerSteinitzPapers" /><ref name="chessvilleSteinitzPapers" /> He even co-operated with the American Chess Congress in its project to regulate future contests for the world title that he had earned.<ref name="Thulin1899WorldChampionshipMatchOrNot" />

Steinitz strove to be objective in his writings about chess competitions and games; for example, he attributed to sheer bad luck a poor tournament score by [[Henry Edward Bird]], whom he considered no friend of his,<ref name="WinterSteinitzQuotes" /> and was generous in his praise of great play by even his bitter enemies.<ref>for example he described Zukertort's win over Blackburne in the London 1883 tournament (where Steinitz finished second behind Zukertort) as "one of the most brilliant games on record", and Blackburne's win over Schwarz in Berlin, 1881, with the words "White's design, especially from the 21st move in combination with the brilliant finish, belongs to the finest efforts of chess genius in modern match play." {{cite book | author=Fine, R. | title=The World's Great Chess Games | year=1952
 | publisher=Andre Deutsch (now as paperback from Dover) }} Zukertort's win is at {{cite web | url=http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1001854 | title=Zukertort's Immortal: Johannes Zukertort vs Joseph Henry Blackburne, London, 1883}} Blackburne's win is at {{cite web | url=http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1029022 | title=Joseph Henry Blackburne vs Jacques Schwarz, Berlin, 1881 }}</ref> He could poke fun at some of his own rhetoric; for example: "I remarked that I would rather die in America than live in England. ... I added that I would rather lose a match in America than win one in England. But after having carefully considered the subject in all its bearings, I have come to the conclusion that I neither mean to die yet nor to lose the match."<ref name="WinterSteinitzQuotes" /> At a joint simultaneous display in Russia around the time of the 1895–96 [[Saint Petersburg]] tournament, [[Emanuel Lasker]] and Steinitz formed an impromptu comedy double act.<ref>{{cite journal | journal=Quarterly for Chess History | issue=3 | year=1999 | title=Wilhelm Steinitz in Russia 1895–96 | url=http://www.chessville.com/reviews/QCH19993.htm | access-date=2008-05-06 | archive-date=2012-10-25 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121025202325/http://www.chessville.com/reviews/QCH19993.htm | url-status=usurped }}</ref>

Although he had a strong sense of honour about repaying debts,<ref name="LandsbergerSteinitzPapers" /><ref name="chessvilleSteinitzPapers" /> Steinitz was poor at managing his finances: he let a competitor "poach" many of his clients in 1862–63,<ref name="chessvilleSteinitzPapers" /> offered to play the 1886 world title match against [[Johannes Zukertort]] for free,<ref name="WinterWorldChessChampion" /> and died in poverty in 1900, leaving his widow to survive by running a small shop.<ref name="NYTimesSteinitzObit1900" />