[Rarebooks] fa: [CHINA] A.B. Freeman-Mitford: THE ATTACHE AT PEKING - First Edition 1900

[ArCh]

Auction ending Sunday, November 14. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/4yuvxwj5

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


A. B. Freeman-Mitford: The Attache at Peking. London: Macmillan and Co., 1900. First edition; 8vo (20 cm) in original publisher's polished black cloth with gilt-lettered spine and gilt-stamped bats to the front and rear covers; lviii, 386, [2] pp.; with terminal leaf of publisher's adverts, folding plan of Peking. Binding with light bumping to the extremities, a few faint scratches/abrasions; spotting to the endpapers, else very clean and sound, firmly bound. Front free-endpaper with the early bookplate of Chas. Fletcher.

Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale (1837-1916), was a diplomat, architectural preservationist, and writer who had served with the British legation in China during the 1860s, traveling extensively throughout the the country. The work includes observations on Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai, Tiensing, Mongolia, Chinese medicine and politics, etc., etc. The epitome of the high-Victorian "orientalist," Freeman-Mitford was also something of an expert on Japan, and acted as a consultant to Gilbert and Sullivan as they wrote The Mikado. He was the cousin of Algernon Swinburne, the paternal grandfather of the Mitford sisters, and reputedly the father, by way of his wife's sister Blanche, of Clementine Hozier, later Mrs. Winston Churchill.