[Rarebooks] fa: CHAMBERLAIN - PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION to the STUDY OF JAPANESE WRITING 1899

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, September 27. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/pf4qolm

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain

Basil Hall Chamberlain: A Practical Introduction to the Study of Japanese Writing. London: Sampson, Low, Marston, & Co.; Yokohama [etc.]: Kelly & Walsh, 1899. FIRST EDITION. Tall 4to (30.5 cm) in original printed cloth over boards; vi, [2], 482, [4] pp.; with the errata slip.

Binding is lacking the spine, both boards detached, cloth torn and creased; text block separating with the first several page-gatherings detached, others loosening or tender; title-page with the signature of an early/original owner ("C. S. Guffin") who has also added occasional tidy, scholarly comments in the margins, mostly in pencil; finger smudge  to first sectional title-page, otherwise clean; front paste-down with the later bookplate of Lt. Colonel V.S.M. de Guinzbourg. Loosely laid in is a small collection of ephemera, mostly older leaves printed in Japanese, two large and folding, some annotated in English, and two pages of ms. notes.

A surprisingly uncommon book in the first edition. Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935) was a professor of Japanese at Tokyo Imperial University and one of the foremost British Japanologists active in Japan during the late nineteenth century. He was a friend of Lafcadio Hearn and wrote some of the earliest translations of haiku into English.