ANDERSON, Aeneas.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

A Narrative of the British Embassy to China, in the Years 1792, 1793, and 1794; First edition of the earliest published account of the Macartney Embassy, written by his personal attendant. Rushed into print to capitalize on public interest, Anderson's book was a great success, and second and third editions followed within a year. This copy has the bookplate of Edward Monckton, an 18th-century East India Company nabob with business interests in India and China.By cashing in ahead of Staunton and others, Anderson and his publisher provoked the invective of John Barrow, whose own narrative, released a decade later, riled against "a work vamped up by a London bookseller as a speculation that could not fail, so greatly excited was public curiosity at the return of the Embassy" (quoted in Löwendahl). But Anderson "was a sensible, highly articulate, observant, keenly intelligent and broad-minded man." His account "almost pulsates with life" (Butler).Monckton (1744-1832) joined the East India Company establishment in Madras in 1762 and remained in the country for the next 16 years, rising through the bureaucracy to become a senior merchant. His trade interests were represented in Canton by the Scottish agent John Crichton. Monckton's signature is on the title page.

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