Fanning the Grave, and The Wife Tested.

A$1,500 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Limited edition

Shanghai : printed and published by Da Costa Co., at the Ching-Foong Printing Office, 1873. Octavo, old diced morocco, lettered in gilt along the spine (edges rubbed), original yellow wrappers bound in, pp 12, printed in blue ink with red decorative border; light foxing but a very good copy. Two poems by Stent featuring the character Mr. Chuang’s strange encounter with a young widow: “The head of my poor lover is wracked with throbbing pains, / Your head contains the remedy I have come to take your brains!” George Carter Stent (1833-1884) served with the 14th Dragoons in India during the Mutiny, and came to China in the 1860s as a member of the guard of the new British Legation. In 1869 he joined the Maritime Customs. In Beijing he fell in love not only with the Chinese language but also with Chinese popular songs and ballads and their music. Apart from some articles based on lectures for the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, he published several dictionaries of the Beijing dialect and two collections of translations from Chinese folk literature. While some of the translations were based on written sources, other texts were based on oral performances by street singers as carefully recorded by Stent. Book talk by Wilt L. Idema, Learning from George Carter Stent (1833-1884): Some Issues in the Study and Translation of Traditional Chinese Popular Literature , June 25, 2016, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Rare. We can locate only two examples in libraries (Britis

• Binding: Hardcover

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