A SOUVENIR BOOK BY CHINA’S FIRST MODERN PUBLISHING HOUSE
[COMMERCIAL PRESS, SHANGHAI.]
[Cover title:] Views of China - 中國名勝 [Zhongguo ming sheng].
Shanghai, Commercial Press, [1913 ca.].
Oblong 8vo (cm 18 x 24), pp. [10, list of plates in English and Chinese], 182 halftone plates, [2, colophon in Chinese]; an excellent copy, bound in the original illustrated cloth; bookplate of Keith G. Stevens to front pastedown.
A pictorial multilingual souvenir book by China’s first modern publishing house.
The Commercial Press was founded in 1897 by four young printers working at the American Presbyterian Mission Press, who had been schooled by Presbyterians. Its success was in part due to their output of in-demand foreign-language educational material. In addition to the language textbooks and primers, they covered subjects of public interest, such as foreign affairs and literature. Their journals, particularly The Eastern Miscellany, proved quite influential and their English-language correspondence course was well subscribed. This volume represents their foray into the tourist market, and was presumably made viable thanks to their large stock of images already available, created for their various publishing projects. Lists of contents (both English and Chinese) precede the plates, which are also captioned in both languages. The images show the most well-known places to visit both for foreign and Chinese tourists, including the Ming tombs, the Peking-Hankow railway and the Great Wall. Smaller towns and their landmarks are also depicted, such as bridges and caves with curious and romantic names. Numerous monasteries, temples and pagodas also feature.
