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156 TAOISM – AU-YOUNG, Sum Nung (trans.) Lao Tze’s Tao Teh King: The Bible of Taoism. New York: March & Greenwood, 1938 with the author’s elegant signatures and a later gift inscription by his friend First edition, signed by the author in English and Chinese on the front free endpaper, later inscribed by one of his close supporters, “To Brig. Gen. James W. Gerard II, my friend, and commandant, with my best wishes, Al Fears”. Now uncommon in commerce, this was the first English translation by a Chinese scholar of the foundational book of Taoism. The enigmatic polymath Dr Sum Nung Au-Young (1893–1942) was an accomplished poet, philosopher, lawyer and economist. In 1915, he left Hong Kong for San Francisco, spending the next few years studying on the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship at a succession of American universities including Brown and Colombia. In the early 1920s, he returned to China, taking teaching posts at Yenching and St John’s, while also practising law in Shanghai. In 1927, Au-Young moved back to the US and became a poet, publishing a poem (“Tao”) in the New York Times in July the same year and releasing his first book of poetry, The Rolling Pearl , in 1930. His second collection, The Marriage of the Son and Moon (1938), was dedicated to his romantic interest Ruth St Denis, and in 1938 he published the present translation – the fruits of ten years of comparative textual scholarship.
157 TESTINO, Mario. Kate Moss. Cologne: Taschen, 2010 First edition, number 53 of 1,500 copies numbered and signed by the photographer. Folio. Original silver boards, lettering taken from a photo of Kate Moss. Housed in the publisher’s acrylic box. With the original packaging box. Photographs throughout. Very slight rubbing to extremities of dust jacket, otherwise in fine condition. £1,500 [156721] 158 THOMAS, Dylan. Under Milk Wood. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1954 First edition in book form. Under Milk Wood was commissioned as a radio drama by the BBC, and broadcast on 25 January 1954 and was first printed in the magazine Mademoiselle in their February 1954 issue. Octavo. Original brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. With 9 pages of facsimile manuscript sheet music at end. Cloth bright, minor rubbing at ends and corners, very mild foxing to edges, contents clean. A near- fine copy in unclipped dust jacket, small faint splash mark on sunned spine, else notably bright, short closed tear at head, a little rubbing, slight foxing, not affecting front panel, very good indeed. ¶ Rolph B21. £675 [159707]
154 STEBBINS, Nathaniel Livermore. The Yachtsman’s Album. Boston: N. L. Stebbins, 1896 the work of a pioneering maritime photographer in the golden age of american yacht building First and only edition of this attractive and detailed publication. “The indexes and leaves of plates are divided into two parts, the first encompassing steam yachts, and the second, sailing yachts . . . For each yacht the indexes give owner, length on the water line, beam, draft, designer, builder, and year built (Toy)”; rare, five copies only located by WorldCat, no appearances at auction. Provenance: from the library of Francis Boardman Crowninshield Bradlee (1881–1928), with a library annotation in pencil on the verso of the title page: “gift, F. B. C. Bradlee, F. 29, 1928, 797.6 S81”. Bradlee was a collector of books and ephemera relating to steamships and railroads; and the majority of his collection is now held at the Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. Also with the bookplate of the Library of the Essex Institute noting the bequest of Bradlee and the Institute’s blind stamp on the title page. Landscape octavo (170 × 214 mm). Publisher’s brown hard- grain morocco, front cover lettered in gilt, sepia patterned endpapers, edges gilt. With 60 collotype plates showing 4 images on each plate. A little rubbed and scuffed, sometime
in Tokyo in 1905, followed by the publication of this “more substantial edition” (p. 92), the first British edition. As a result Lionel Giles, the leading Sinologist of the period, was prompted to produce his own translation in 1910, in the introduction commenting somewhat acerbically on Calthrop’s work: “the translator’s knowledge of Chinese was far too scanty to fit him to grapple with the manifold difficulties of Sun Tzu”. This should not, however, detract from the importance of Calthrop’s translation in stimulating interest in this founding text of strategic thought, or on its impact on contemporary military debate. The anonymous reviewer for the United Services Magazine was deeply impressed: “The Sayings of Sun and Wu make one ‘furiously to think’ . . . We have been furnished with a treatise equivalent to a précis of Clausewitz – and infinitely more interesting”. Octavo. Original moderate green cloth, title gilt to spine and also to front board with red decorative panel and central “wheel” device. A few light abrasions to front cover, head and tail of spine just lightly crumpled, offsetting to free endpapers, customary scattered foxing, contemporary neat gift inscription to front free endpaper. A very good copy. ¶ Dobson, “Lieutenant-Colonel Everard Ferguson Calthrop (1876–1915)” in Cortazzi, ed, Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits VII , pp.85– 101; Ion, “Something new under the Sun: Calthrop and the art of war” in Japan Forum , 2:1, 1990, pp. 29–41. £6,500 [151663]
Today, it is his most well-known and enduring work. Little is know about Alfred Beattle Fears (1904– 1994). Sum Nung Au-Young’s preface expresses “my sincere appreciation for his [Fears’s] friendly spirit and helpfulness toward the publicaton [ sic ] of this book”. The recipient James Watson Gerard II (1914–1987) joined the US Army in 1937, serving in the Second World War and in Korea, before working at the Pentagon between 1952 and 1957. Despite retiring in 1961, he held the position of commander of the New York state Veteran Corps of Artillery between 1975 and 1986, and Fears likely served under Gerard in this corps. Loosely inserted is a typed letter signed, on Fears’s New York letterhead and dated 11 April 1978: “Dear General; You are so generous not only giving many books, but in so many other ways. I thought it would be nice to receive something your self for a change. Sincerely, Al”. Au-Young’s translation was also issued simultaneously as a numbered limited edition of 350 copies, with no clear priority between the two. Octavo. Original purple bead-grained cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Title page printed in red and purple, purple text throughout. Cloth and gilt bright, touch of sunning to extremities, free endpapers browned where four small tape pieces once affixed, two adhesive tape strips sometime connecting pastedowns to jacket flaps, slight bump to fore edge of pp. 99–111, text clean. A very good copy indeed in the very good dust jacket with marking, a few losses with spine panel text slightly affected, and couple of professional archival tape repairs internally. £1,500 [154783]
neatly refurbished, inner hinges strengthened with cloth, front flyleaf with minor rumpling and loss to top right corner, endpapers with edges repaired, internally clean. A very good copy. ¶ Morris & Howland, p. 131; Toy 331. £1,250 [158893] 155 SUN TZU – CALTHROP, Everard Ferguson, Captain. The Book of War. London: John Murray, 1908 the first english sun tzu First edition of the first recognized translation into English of the Chinese classic of strategic philosophy, genuinely uncommon on the market. Calthrop served in the Far East as a language officer, initially as an observer of the Russo-Japanese War. It was a posting that he took to with great intuition and commitment. His successor as military attaché in Tokyo, Major-General “Roy” Piggott wrote of Calthrop that “Few had penetrated so deeply below the hard-frozen and unyielding surface of Japanese social life . . . no other officer amassed more knowledge of, or had more sympathy with, the Japanese; some had more knowledge without the sympathy, and some the sympathy without the knowledge” (quoted in Dobson, p. 85). Almost inevitably he was drawn to the previously untranslated writings of Sun Tzu and Wu Tzu. His first essay at translation was issued, perhaps privately,
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All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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