WORCESTER, Doris.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Some Chungking Types. First edition, first printing, signed by the author on the title page, of this collection of sketches from her time in the Chinese wartime capital of Chongqing (Chungking). She was interned by the Japanese shortly after publication and died in 1945, making signed copies inevitably scarce.Doris Worcester (1893-1945) spent a considerable amount of time in China alongside her husband, G. R. G. Worcester, who worked for the Chinese Maritime Customs Service for three decades. After the beginning of the Second World War in Asia, Worcester spent 17 months in Chongqing, the new capital of the Republic of China after the government was forced to abandon Nanjing.The present work showcases her pictorial impressions of Chongqing's everyday inhabitants, featuring sketches of tradesman, weavers, street sellers, and a Taoist mendicant. It is an excellent example of a longstanding genre of Western publishing on China in which illustrations of typical street figures are paired with explanatory text.In December 1941, Japanese forces invaded Shanghai's international settlement and the Worcesters were sent to an internment camp where they saw out the war. Doris Worcester died shortly after her release, and Some Chungking Types was reprinted in 1970 alongside her husband's The Floating Population in China: An Illustrated Record of the Junkmen and their Boats on Sea and River.This copy is from the library of the sinologist Keith Stevens (1926-2015), with his decorative bookpl

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