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41 CONSTANT, Samuel Victor. Calls, Sounds and Merchandise of the Peking Street
with Westerners who dropped in to buy silks, furs, curios and art, and Burton appears regularly in many memoirs of Republican Beijing. This copy was sold by the Peking Bookshop, another favourite haunt of foreigners located within the Grand Hotel des Wagons-Lits in the Legation Quarter. Landscape octavo (184 × 262 mm). Chinese thread xianzhuang-style binding, original decorative brocade boards, front board with title in black to red label mounted on white paper, orange and white patterned endpapers, folded leaves. Housed in original patterned case with title label. With 16 photographs tipped in, white papercut, colour illustrations of each type of pedlar and their wares, illustration of the 8 trigrams, 2 musical scores of pedlar songs. Bookseller’s ticket (“The Peking Bookshop, Grand Hotel des Wagons-Lits, Peking”) to rear pastedown, corresponding redaction and overstamping of publisher imprint to title page. Joints professionally refurbished, brocade bright with small losses, contents lightly foxed and toned, else clean, photographs and illustrations attractive. A very good copy of this delicate publication in the very good case with moderate rubbing and two joints neatly repaired. £3,500 [150570] 42 CORNWELL, Patricia. Postmortem. New
Octavo. Original red cloth, black cloth backstrip, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. A fine copy, in fine jacket. £1,000 [153617] 43 CORTÁZAR, Julio. Hopscotch. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966 First edition in English, following publication in Spanish in 1963. Cortázar’s experimental novel was an important contribution to the Latin American Boom. Rabassa was jointly awarded the inaugural National Book Award for his translation. Octavo. Original orange cloth, spine lettered in blue. With dust jacket. A fine copy, in bright jacket, price-clipped else fine. £600 [153611] 44 COX, Morris (illus.) An Impression of Winter; Spring; Summer; Autumn. A Landscape Panorama. London: Gogmagog Press, 1965–66 “THE PEAK OF HIS ACHIEVEMENT AS A PRINTER” – COLIN FRANKLIN First edition, signed limited issue of 100 copies ( Spring number 77/100, Summer 71, Autumn 43, Winter 7). The complete set is considered to be the magnum opus of the press (Chambers, p. 20).
Peddlers. Peking: The Camel Bell, 1936 THE CHINESE CITY THAT NEVER SLEPT
First edition of this rich record of street life in Republican Beijing written by an American military attaché. Employing candid photographs, colourful drawings, and even musical scores, the work captures the itinerant and human side of Chinese urban economic life in the 1930s, aspects less well recorded in many travel narratives and photobooks. The book details 54 types, divided according to the season where they are most active, including the “toy peddler”, the “feet fixer”, and the intriguingly named “running band boat”. The author, Samuel Victor Constant (1894–1989), was a US Army officer and a specialist in Asian languages. In 1924, he was posted to China to serve as a military attaché and, during 12 years in Beijing, he gathered material for the present work. It was submitted to the California College in China in part fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. Shortly after his death, it was republished by the Bird & Bull Press in the United States, while a Chinese translation – Jing du jiaomai tu – was released in Beijing in 1994. The publisher, the Camel Bell, was a legendary shop based in the Grand Hotel de Pekin and overseen by the American Helen Burton. Her store was popular
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990 HER DEBUT NOVEL, INSCRIBED
First edition of Cornwell’s debut novel, inscribed by the author on the title page: “To Saul Cohen – nice to meet you! With best wishes, Patricia Cornwell, 8–19–92”.
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SPRING 2022
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