DAVIS, John Francis.

£2,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Fortunate Union, a Romance, Translated from the Chinese Original, with Notes and Illustrations. To Which is Added a Chinese Tragedy. First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by Davis on the title page of Volume I, "Emily C. Whiteman, with the Translator's kind regards." The recipient (1838-1871) was the daughter of John Clarmont Whiteman, a Canton merchant and an eventual director of the East India Company. Davis had an equally stellar career, joining the company in 1813 and later serving as the governor of Hong Kong.Written anonymously during the Ming dynasty, the Haoqiu zhuan tells of a courtship between two lovers: the son of a powerful Beijing magistrate and the daughter of a disgraced military commander. "The novel is a type of the caizi jiaren xiaoshuo or 'scholar-beauty' fiction that features romances between beautiful maidens and talented scholars, though its pronounced Confucian 'Puritanism' is not typical of the genre... The two young people resist the attempts of their enemies to undermine their moral integrity... They remain chaste and virtuous until their much-delayed marriage" (Kitson, p. 35).Introducing the present version, dedicated to Sir George Staunton, Davis (1795-1890) contrasts his efforts to an earlier English version, in which "much was mistranslated, much interpolated, and a great deal omitted altogether" (p. viii). His "is more of a popular romance, with comparatively few references and glosses, about a world whose language and culture [was] r

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