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The China Press (Chinese: “Dalu bao”) was founded in 1911 by the American journalist Thomas Franklin Fairfax Millard (1868–1942), known to contemporaries as the “dean of American newspapermen in the Orient” (Weinberg, p. 119). “Millard had started the China Press partly with the vision that the paper should promote contact between the foreign community and the Chinese. He went so far as to install several prominent Chinese on the paper’s board of directors and actively sought to promote China stories to the front pages using the adage that news about China should be treated in the same way as the big New York papers covered US news” (French, p. 22). The China Press broke the news of the fall of the Qing dynasty and the ascendancy of Sun Yat-sen, outmanoeuvring more established rivals such as the North China Daily News . Slim quarto. Original card wrappers, stapled as issued, front cover lettered in red and black with vignette and Chinese inscription on red ground. Folding map of Shanghai, folding plate after photographs by the Ah Fong studio, illustrations in text by Leslie Shaw. Inkstamped on the front wrapper, “China Club of Seattle”: it was founded in 1916 to promote American investment in China, and its activities were regularly featured in other publications in Millard’s Chinese media empire. Wrappers bright, small faint tidemark at upper left corner of front cover, lower tip of covers and book block lightly bumped, a little even toning internally, illustrations clean. A very good copy indeed. ¶ Paul French, Carl Crow, A Tough Old China Hand: The Life, Times and Adventures of an American in Shanghai , 2007; Steve Weinberg, A Journalism of Humanity: A Candid History of the World’s First Journalism School , 2008. £950 [155033]
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translation. Spine tips slightly worn, spine slightly sunned, abrasions to front cover, light browning to endpapers; a very good and internally clean copy. ¶ Meister 173; Charles W. Meister, “Chekhov’s Reception in England and America”, The American Slavic and East European Review , February 1953, pp.
Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in white, and front boat with boat design blocked in white. Folding map frontispiece. 4 pp. publisher’s advertisements at the rear. Small ink ownership inscription to front pastedown. A near- fine copy with the cloth unusually fresh and the cover design still bright, lettering flaked in some places to spine but much better preserved than usual, minimal rubbing to tips only, minor small abrasion to rear cover, spotting to edges and occasionally within but generally a smart clean copy, sound and unrepaired. £8,000 [154929] 24 THE CHINA PRESS. Shanghai: the Gateway of China. Shanghai: The China Press, 1922 Sole edition of this genuinely scarce introduction to Shanghai, also serving as a promotional brochure for the China Press , a major English-language newspaper in coastal cities. We have traced only one institutional copy, at the University of Oregon.
109–121. £6,500
[154457]
23 CHILDERS, Erskine. The Riddle of the Sands. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1903 THE FIRST MODERN SPY NOVEL First edition of Childers’s only novel, and the first modern spy novel. Childers wrote this tale of coastal espionage as a call to the British government to look to its North Sea defences. Copies of this Haycraft- Queen cornerstone surviving in collector’s condition, fresh and untouched by repair, are rare.
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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