The magazine was begun by George Jelliss in 1990, who completed one volume of eight issues.
The magazine was originally issued in B5 size, although the artwork was A4.
The PDF copies, apart from #6, are reproduced direct from the original artwork, so a few paste-up lines are visible.
From issue #3 onwards the text was typeset on computer, though the diagrams were still pasted in by hand.
In 1993 the magazine was taken over by Peter Wood who produced twelve issues which constitute Volume 2.
He set a style for subsequent volumes and included regular coverage of Xiangqi and Shogi.
From 1996 Variant Chess became the magazine of the newly formed British Chess Varants Society (BCVS), with David Pritchard as President.
It ran to eight volumes and 64 issues, until the closure of the Society in 2010.
The editor of volume 3 was George Jelliss, of volumes 5 and 6, Paul Byway, and volumes 4, 7 and 8, John Beasley.
For details of the contents of each issue see this page on our archived website of the British Chess Variants Society.
All 64 issues of the magazine, published 1990 - 2010, are now available for download in PDF form here.
Vol.1, issues 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Vol.2, issues 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
Vol.3, issues 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28.
Vol.5, issues 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40.
Vol.7, issues 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54.
Vol.8, issues 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63.
The final issue is divided into four separate PDFs: Vol.8, issue 64:
p173,
pp174-189,
pp190-217,
pp218-244.
PDF copies of all 64 issues are also on the Variant Chess page on this site.