五車韻府 A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, by the Rev. R. Morrison, D. D.

A$20,000 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Limited edition

Shanghae : London Mission Press; London : Trübner Co., 1865. Second edition. Two volumes, octavo, contemporary half-russet roan over marbled papered boards, spines in compartments with raised bands, lettered in gilt, shelf labels to foot of spines, light edge wear, shelf marks to front pastedowns and title pages, pp. ix; [blank]; 224, 224-239, 239 762 (pagination duplicated for 224 and 239); [ii title], 724, iv (list of radicals), 99 (index of the characters), [blank]; text in Chinese and English, volume two neatly rebacked preserving original spine and endpapers, a few spots of foxing, a very good, complete set. WITHOUT DISPUTE, THE BEST CHINESE DICTIONARY COMPOSED IN A EUROPEAN LANGUAGE . The Anglo-Scottish Protestant missionary and East India Company translator Robert Morrison lived and worked in Macau and Canton between 1807 and his death in 1834. In 1815 his Grammar of the Chinese language was published in Serampore, India, but the Dictionary of the Chinese language printed at Macao between 1815 and 1823 was Morrison s most important and lasting contribution to Western understanding of the Chinese language. The first major Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionary, its transcriptions are based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. The Chinese and English Dictionary (Batavia : printed at Parapattan, 1842 43) compiled by the English Congregationalist missionary Walter Henry Medhurst (1796–1857), is the second major Chinese–English dictionary after Robert Morrison s pioneer

• Binding: Hardcover

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