Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in three parts. Part II, Vol. I.

A$1,750 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Limited edition

[Shanghai : Chung Hwa Book Co., Ltd., 1913]. Thick octavo (235 x 155 mm), publisher s gilt-lettered blue cloth (somewhat mildew-stained, cloth splitting along outer front hinge and frayed at spine ends); title-leaf of Part II. Vol. 1 (1819), title-leaf of Part II. Vol. II (1820), pp. xx, 1090, 72 (Index of the Characters); printed on rice paper on double-leaves folded in the traditional Chinese manner; hinges cracked, some foxing to fore-edge of text block, a few pages with staining but otherwise contents very clean throughout. Robert Morrison s monumental Chinese dictionary comprises three Parts in six Volumes: Part the First: Chinese and English, arranged according to the radicals (the key characters used for sorting Chinese words); Part the Second: Chinese and English, arranged alphabetically (using a system of transliteration, a precursor to Wade-Giles); Part the Third: English and Chinese, providing definitions and examples from Chinese classics. The first edition was printed on the East India Company s Press at Macau by P. P. Thoms, and was published between 1815 and 1823. Various subsequent editions followed in the nineteenth century. However, it was not until almost a century later, in 1913, that the Chung Hwa Book Co. in Shanghai, which had only recently been established the previous year, published the first pocket-size reprint of Part II, Volumes I and II. Both of these reprinted Volumes retained the pagination of the original printings (which had been published in

• Printing: later
• Binding: Hardcover

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