A Grammar of the Chinese Colloquial Language,

Shanghai: London Mission Press,, 1857. A remarkable language genius First edition, rare, of this monograph by the gifted linguist Joseph Edkins. Objecting to contemporary views of the Chinese language as "abnormal" and "misshapen", he endeavours to present a sophisticated portrayal, "in all their copiousness and variety, [of] the laws of combination existing in groups of words, and further to trace the origin and progress of the mandarin language by means of its literature" (p. i). Edkins (1823-1905) first arrived in China in 1848 under the auspices of the London Missionary Society. He spent the next 57 years in the country, first in Shanghai and then in Yantai, Tianjin, and Beijing. One of the first Protestant missionaries to reside in the capital, he assisted in the production of the New Testament in Mandarin. Proficient in Mandarin, Manchu, Miao, and Cantonese, he published over 20 sinological monographs including a study of the Shanghai dialect in 1853. For this work, he drew extensively on Li Ruzhen's Lishi yinjian (Li's Mirror of Phonetics), a popular Chinese study of Mandarin. Quarto (205 x 132 mm). Contemporary quarter sheep, spine lettered in gilt, marbled sides, edges sprinkled blue. Contemporary ownership ink stamp on title page and at foot of p. 131 and final leaf. Binding sturdy, leather gently retouched in places, extremities worn, front free endpaper consolidated with adhesive at foot, title page with minor loss not affecting text, whole leaf backed with sheet of paper at time of binding, light discolouration to paper at foot of some leaves as issued, text clean. A very good copy. Cordier 770. Lan Jiang, A History of Western Appreciation of English-translated Tang Poetry, 2018.