Chinese and English Dictionary ; containing all the words in the Chinese Imperial Dictionary, arranged according to the radicals.

A$15,000 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Limited edition

Batavia : printed at Parapattan, 1842 43. Two volumes in contemporary bindings, half calf over marbled papered boards, flat panelled spines ruled and lettered in gilt, contrasting morocco title labels lettered in gilt, lightly scuffed and a small repaired tear to the spine of second volume, contemporary owner s name (Dallas) inscribed on title pages in pen, a later owner s name (Colt) inscribed in pencil to the endpapers, vol. I pp. xxiv; 648; 29; vol. II pp. 649 1486; [2 blanks]; 28, internally clean, a fine set, complete in contemporary bindings. The second Chinese English Dictionary, printed on the Protestant lithographic press in Parapattan, Batavia (present-day Jakarta). The Chinese and English Dictionary, compiled by the English Congregationalist missionary Walter Henry Medhurst (1796–1857), is the second major Chinese–English dictionary after Robert Morrison s pioneering A Dictionary of the Chinese Language (Macao, 1815 – 1823). Medhurst s intention was to publish an abridged and cheaper dictionary that still contained all the 47,035 head characters from the imperial Kangxi Dictionary (1716). Whereas Morrison s Dictionary is a six-volume quarto of over 4000 pages, Medhurst s more compact effort is complete in two octavo volumes, printed in October 1842 and May 1843. Printed at Medhurst s own expense in a run of just 600 copies, the set sold for 10 Spanish dollars. Walter Henry Medhurst (1796-1857), an English Congregational missionary, was one of the first translators

• Binding: Hardcover

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