Chinese Chips.

Shanghai: Shanghai Mercury, Ltd,, 1914. First edition, first printing, presentation copy inscribed by the author on the title page, "friendship's offering, W. R. Kahler, 22/7/14". A scarce work, with only four copies recorded on WorldCat, and with an attractive provenance, from the library of the sinologist Keith Stevens. This work, one of several by the journalist William R. Kahler, discusses his trips to different Chinese tourist spots, recording impressions of what he saw, as well as useful historical information on temples, grave sites, and other architectural features. In early 20th-century Shanghai, when most foreign residents kept to the comfortable environs of the treaty ports, such accounts were extremely popular. The material in Chinese Chips was first published in The Union, a Shanghai newspaper of which Kahler was editor. This copy is from the library of the sinologist Keith Stevens (1926-2015), with his decorative bookplate to the front pastedown. Stevens, a British scholar-diplomat, was an authority on Chinese religion and iconography, publishing 36 articles and 2 books on the subject, including the definitive Chinese Gods: The Unseen World of Spirits and Demons (1997). Fittingly, his bookplate shows the Buddhist deity Wei Tuo, the "protector of books" and a guardian "against fire, destructive insects and dishonest borrowers". Octavo. Original blue cloth, title stamped to front board in dark blue. half-tone frontispiece of the "Ghost Tree of Pootung", and 23 half-tone plates. A couple of light marks to boards, extremities rubbed, odd spot of foxing. A very good copy.