China North & South - A Series of Vandyck Photogravures Illustrating the Picturesque Aspect of Chinese Life and Surroundings by D. Mennie (Donald Mennie) - 1920

Shanghai: A.S. Watson & Co. (The Shanghai Pharmacy Ltd.), 1920. 2nd Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Very Good. 4to - over 9¾ - 12" tall. Text in English. Illustrations in black and white. Original string bound boards. Oblong quarto. Spine head and foot worn. Covers, front endpaper and title page slightly soiled. A few foxing. Otherwise internally clean, tight and very good. One rare photographs album by Donald Mennie, second and revised edition, circa 1920. This wonderful photobook offers a rare glimpse into Chinese North and South life and surroundings during the 1920s. Including cover 31 tipped-in sepia photographs. Such as "a Chinese waterway--Soochow", "tiendong temple--Ningpo", "pi yun ssu--Peking", "a street in Hangchow", "scrollmakers' street--Shanghai native city", "on the golden min--Foochow", and others. Donald Mennie (1875/1876 - 1941) was a Scottish businessman and amateur photographer. He arrived in Beijing in 1899. He first worked as an assistant in the firm of Mactavish & Lehman & Co in Beijing. Then he became the firm's managing director of A.S. Watson & Co in Shanghai. In his photographs Mennie tried to capture a romantic vision of 'antique China', featuring dusty caravans of horses or camels, old palaces and authentic street scenes, all in and around Beijing. Between 1914 and 1927 he published several books covering his photographic work, including "The Pageant of Peking", "Glimpses of China" , "China North and South" and "The Grandeur of the Gorges". Mennie's photographs illustrated "My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard" by Elizabeth Cooper (1914) and "The Great River: The story of a voyage on the Yangtze Kiang" by Gretchen Fitkin (1922). Size: 11.4X9.2X0.4 inches 30 pages.