A TO Z OF CHINA
PLAYFAIR, George Macdonald Home.
The Cities and Towns of China. A geographical dictionary …
Hong Kong, Noronha & Co., 1879.
Large 8vo, pp. xii, 417, [1, blank], 31, [4], xvi-lviii; text in English and Chinese characters; a little toning and foxing, some light dampstaining to lower margins; good in contemporary green cloth, spine lettered in gilt; some splitting to upper joint, some wear to spine ends, corners, and edges, small marks to covers; ink inscription to title-page ‘RA de Villard’, twentieth-century owner’s inscription to front free endpaper, geographic coordinates added in pencil to pp. 27 and 30 of Appendix.
First edition of a dictionary of Chinese towns and cities by G.M.H. Playfair (1850–1917), based upon the French Sinologist Édouard Biot’s earlier Dictionnaire of 1842.
Comprising over nine thousand entries, running from Aan to Zimeriek, Playfair’s work was intended to reflect the many changes which had occurred, ‘even in conservative China’ (Preface), since Biot’s publication, and to update his system of orthography. The appendices comprise a ‘synoptical table of the administrative cities of China arranged alphabetically under their provinces’ (from Anhui to Yunnan), and a radical index.
Playfair joined the British consular service in China in 1872, subsequently serving as vice-consul at Shanghai, and as consul at Beihai, Ningbo, and Fuzhou.
Provenance: with the signature of Robert Alexis de Villard (1860–1904), artist and Shanghai-based customs official.
Cordier, Sinica 192.
