Howard Staunton was born in April 1810 in Westmoreland, England. He may have been the illegitimate son of the Frederick Howard, fifth Earl of Carlisle. It appears that Howard Staunton was not his real name. He started out as an actor in Shakespeare's plays. In 1836 Staunton came to London and was a subscriber to William Walker's collection of chess games of Alexander McDonnell. He learned chess at the Divan.

Following Staunton's defeat of St. Amant of France in 1843, he was recognized as the world's strongest chess player (although this was before the establishment of a World Chess championship in 1886). Staunton went on to write a chess column in the Illustrated London News before founding the world's first chess magazine, the Chess Player's Chronicle.

On September 8, 1849 Staunton endorsed the chess set design by Nathaniel Cook and manufactured by his brother-in-law, John Jacques. He recommended the sets in the Illustrated London News and it became known as the Staunton pattern. Later, each chess box that the chessmen came in was signed by Staunton and Jacques stamped upon each set.

In 1851 he organized the world's first international chess tournament during the "Great Exhibition of Art and Industry" in London. Staunton was knocked out in the 3rd round by Anderssen, who won by the score of 4-1. Anderssen won this 16-player knockout event. In 1852 he published The Chess Tournament, about the 1851 tournament. He tried to arrange a chess match with Adolf Anderssen, but Anderssen retired from serious play at this time. In 1853 he travelled to Brussels to meet with Lasa, the German leading chess authority, to standardize the rules of chess. In 1850 Staunton sold his Chess Players Chronicle to R.B. Brien.

In 1856 he began work on an annotated edition of Shakespeare's plays. This was published in monthly installments from November 1857 to May 1860. In 1858 Staunton was challenged to a match by Morphy, but Staunton was working on a tight schedule to publish his works on Shakespeare. His publishers would accept no breach of contract. In 1860 he published Chess Praxis, which includes 168 pages devoted to Morphy's games. It also included a code of chess rules. In 1865 he published Great Schools of England. In March, 1865 he edited a monthly chess magazine called The Chess World. He continued to publish this magazine until March, 1869.

On June 23, 1874, Staunton was working on another chess book when he suffered a fatal heart attack and died in his library chair in London. Staunton's grave is located at Kensal Green, England. In 1997 a memorial stone was raised to mark his grave at Kensal Green Cemetery in London. The tombstone simply says Howard Staunton 1810-1874 and has a large knight on the headstone. Prior to this his grave had been unmarked