Through China with a Camera

Westminster, England: A. Constable & Co., 1898. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Good Minus/No Jacket. In English. Presumed first printing of the first edition. Author's introduction dated January 1898. Size 8.7.5 x 7 inches. Bound in brown buckram, with fairly crisp gilt-stamped emblem to the front board and gently faded gilt-stamped lettering to the spine. Apparently bound in the U.S.; with the Dodd, Mead & Company imprint to the base of the spine. Noticeably rubbed and bumped spine head and tail, and with moderately bumped and rubbed corners. Moderate abrading evident at both corners of the spine head. Fairly clean binding. Hinges tender but holding. T.E.G. and with attractively deckled fore-edge and bottom edge. Half-title, frontispiece, title page. With xiv and 284 numbered pages, including an appendix about the aboriginal dialects of Formosa and with 5 tables regarding tribal names and various languages spoken. Pages 173/4 and 175/6 unopened, i.e., unseparated. Title page states, "With nearly 100 illustrations." A more accurate count might be: 74 full page b/w plates hors texte with a total of 83 b/w photographic illustrations. Photos made via the wet collodion process and printed on semi-glossy stock. An impressively clean interior for a book of this vintage. No stains, stampings or underlining noticed. No missing pages or photos found. A Good Minus copy. A first UK edition is now a very rare book. 2 lbs. 10 oz. This is in effect an inexpensive but enlarged version of the author's earlier work, Illustrations of China and its People. All of the photographs were made in China before 1872. For the present book, Thomson states, they "have been reproduced and transformed into printing blocks by a most effective halftone process, so that nothing in the original plates is lost." The text of the book recounts some of Thomson's troubles making photographs in China. John Thomson [1837-1921] was one of the first to photograph the people and landscape of China for Western eyes. Thomson's travels in China were often perilous and most of the people he encountered had never seen a Westerner or a camera before.