MAO, Zedong.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Mao zhuxi yulu ("Quotations From Chairman Mao"). First edition, first printing, of Mao's "Little Red Book", in the corrected text state, retaining the Lin Biao calligraphic endorsement leaf which was often removed after his demise. As with all first editions, the endorsement includes the well-known error of an extra brush stroke in one of the characters.The first edition of Quotations From Chairman Mao, compiled for internal use within the People's Liberation Army two years before the Cultural Revolution, was issued either in red vinyl plastic as with the present copy or in paper wrappers, with all first editions containing 250 numbered pages of text. According to the editor in charge, those in paper wrappers were issued first for the individual use of high-ranking officers, while those in vinyl, which took longer to produce, were intended for brigades of up to eight men. As Schiller notes, first editions in vinyl may or may not contain a typesetting error found on pp. 82-83; this copy contains the correct text.Despite the Quotations having originally been printed at Lin's behest to elevate Mao's profile within the army, this copy has managed to evade the widespread censorship precipitated by his desperate flight and death in 1971. On September 13 of that year, a plane carrying Lin, along with most of his immediate family, crashed in the Mongolian desert on route to the Soviet Union. The precise cause of his flight is still unknown, with theories continuing to circulate regar

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.