Search Results: Far East from John Randall (Books of Asia)

London: Printed for Awnsham and John Churchill, [1732]. Second edition in English, extracted from Churchill's Voyages, folio, pp. [iv, title and preface], 380. Lacking the two plates. A very good copy in old polished calf boards, recently rebacked, end-papers and page edges comb marbled. Boards a little rubbed and scuffed, text block tight and clean. Domingo Fernández Navarrete (1610-1689), a Dominican friar, served as a missionary in China for many years and was much opposed to the Jesuits' accommodation to traditional Chinese customs in the notorious Rites Controversy. His book, a valued and sympathetic account of China, first appeared in Spanish in 1676 and became popular through much of Europe, especially among those hostile to the Jesuits for its explicitly anti-Jesuit arguments (see Löwendahl 165). The present abridged translation was the first published English translation, appearing in Awnsham and John Churchill's multi-volume 'Collection of voyages' (1704).… Read More

Dublin: printed at the University Press, 1862. Second English edition, the first with Gibbing's introduction and notes, 8vo (23 x 14.5 cm), pp.[iv], 111, [1, advertisements]. A very good copy in contemporary embossed cloth, gilt title on spine. Largely unopened. Light rubbing to boards, corners slightly bumped. Scattered foxing. An important tract on Christianity in China compiled by the Lutheran theologian Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1693-1755) with a fifty-page introduction by Richard Gibbing and his extensive notes. This text was first published in German as Erzählung der neuesten Chinesischen Kirchengeschichte (1748), both separately and as an addition to the first German edition of Du Halde. An English translation was published in 1750 but, according to this editor's introduction, was 'so scarce that its existence is almost unknown'. Von Mosheim provides a historical sketch of Christianity in China and a detailed Protestant analysis of the Catholic missions and the Chinese… Read More

London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1899. First edition, pp.xxiii, 357. [C.-9131] A very good copy bound in later buckram. Lightly frayed original wrappers bound in. Some pencil annotation.

Augsburg: Christoph Mang, 1615. First edition. Small 4to (20.5 x 16 cm), pp.[xii], 111, (110)-646 [but 648 as p.111-2 numbered twice], [8, index], [2, errata, colophon], with the engraved title by Wolfgang Kilian, incorporating Ricci's map of China flanked by portraits of the author and St Francis Xavier. A very good copy bound in modern quarter calf, marbled boards. All edges blue. But lacking the folding plan and the final blank leaf; faint blue stain to fore-edge of initial leaves. Contents otherwise clean and fresh. This eyewitness narrative of the Jesuit mission to Peking became the 'most influential description of China to appear during the first half of the seventeenth century.... It includes a wealth of information about China in the chapters describing geography, people, laws, government, religion, learning, commerce and... provided European readers with more, better organized, and more accurate information about China than was ever before available' (Lach & Van Kley I… Read More

London: published and printed by the author at 12 Warwick Square and sold by James Gilbert, bookseller., 1851. First edition. 8vo (24.5 x 16 cm), pp.63, [1, blank], [2, imprint], with 42 wood engravings in text, title with printed frame in red. Folio broadsheet (40 x 44 cm), folded and tipped-in at rear. A very good copy in original cloth by Josiah Westley. Slight wear to head and tail of spine. Broadsheet lightly age-toned, and torn on folds. A selection of excerpts from the 11th-century Bogu tulu, a Chinese catalogue of imperial bronzes in sixteen volumes, translated by the printer Peter Perring Thoms (1790-1855). Thoms believed that the majority of the vases were made of gold, and the mirrors of polished steel; his dissertation makes no mention of bronze at all. The wood engraved illustrations were done from blocks carved by A-Lae, a Chinese artist from Canton, and were shown at the 1851 Exhibition. This copy has a remarkable broadsheet, The Original Address presented to His Excellency Hwang, on… Read More

[Hong Kong], 1962. Three volumes, folio typescript, pp.(114), (119), 45 maps, 16 folding. Bound by Sam Ying Company of Hong Kong. A very good set in contemporary cloth, spines gilt. Unique well preserved typescripts of a course of lectures on Chinese geographical discovery, delivered by Professor Frederick Seguier Drake (1892-1976), probably at the University of Hong Kong in the 1950s. Drake was an Englishman born in China. Early in life he was ordained and became a missionary, but quickly became more known as a scholar of China particularly of its archaeology. He became Dean of the Faculty of Divinity at Qiliu (Cheeloo) University in Shandong and later Chair of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong which he occupied for twelve years. He is best known for leading the archaeological excavation of the Lei Cheng Uk Eastern Han Tomb in 1955-7, now a national monument.

Kobe: J.L. Thompson & Co , 1929. First edition, pp.xv, 252, frontispiece, 9 plates & maps including a large folding map of Nagasaki in colour. A near fine copy in original cloth, some faint rubbing to edges. Preserved in cloth solander case. Some offsetting to last page of text from map. A superb copy of the uncommon first edition of this record of Raffles' correspondence from Java as he attempted to reopen trade relations between England and Japan. Part of the surrender of Java after Britain's conquest had been the Dutch Commercial Agency on the island of Deshima at Nagasaki, which was the only means of communication Japan used to deal with Europeans. Raffles was Lieutenant-Governor of the British East Indies by the time he was writing, and saw opportunity in trade with Japan when he was having considerable financial struggles in Java. He saw not just a taking over of Dutch trade but "a great Anglo-Japanese commerce based on principles of equality". M. Paske-Smith… Read More

London: Bernard Quaritch; plates by Henry Stone & Son of Banbury., 1921. First edition, two volumes, text in folio, 40 x 31 cm., pp.xii, 65; title-page and 48 plates, thirty-three in large folio, 64 x 51 cm., twelve in three colour, twenty-one in halftone, and fifteen smaller plates, 40 x 31 cm, of which ten in three colour, 5 in halftone. Plates have discretely stamped on reverse, "Printed in England". Overall a very good copy, but showing minor use and wear. Title page lightly spotted. Large plates slightly dog-eared at corners, a few with a small area of lower margin lightly water stained, but images unaffected. The text volume is in original wrappers, with small tears to cover, otherwise pristine. The smaller plates are in fine condition, preserved in their original envelope. The whole is contained in the original half-cloth portfolio. Rear cover of portfolio somewhat spotted, and minor tears to cloth spine. A beautifully printed complement to Serindia, published as… Read More

Paris: N.M. Tilliard; M. Deguignes, 1770. First edition, pp.xxiv, xxxviii, 381, [3, errata; approbation; privilege du Roi]. Text in French. A very good copy bound in contemporary calf, neatly re-backed, all edges red. Boards slightly rubbed and scuffed, end-papers toned, small label fixed to lower board. The first western translation of Qianlong's poem in praise of the capital of the Manchu dynasty, along with a smaller piece on Tea, also by the Emperor, to which is added numerous notes by the translator Amiot on geography, history, and customs to enable the work to be better understood and appreciated by Western readers. Jean Joseph Marie Amiot (1718–1793) was a French Jesuit missionary in Qing China, during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, becoming a close confidant and official translator for Western languages. He is credited with largely expanding the West's understanding of China, being prolific in his time in translating Chinese works for the West, including the first ever… Read More