[SHANGHAI.]
“So–this is Shanghai”.
[Shanghai, A. S. Watson & Co. and Kelly & Walsh, c. 1935.]
Oblong 8vo, 24 ff. of plates, comprising 42 photogravures (18 image size c. 128 x 183 mm (5 x 7¼ inches) and 26 image size c. 62 x 90 mm (2½ x 3½ inches) or the reverse, printed on rectos only, each leaf captioned in English below; original brown card printed wrappers, oval window in upper cover revealing vignette of first gravure beneath.
Rare first edition of a photographic souvenir book of Shanghai. The initial full-page topographical views of the city are followed by a series of smaller format ‘Studies of Chinese Life’, including street scenes and portraits.
The photogravures are from the same series as a Kelly & Walsh publication in large 4to with text by Francis Lister Hawks Pott, Shanghai of To-day: a souvenir album of fifty Vandyke gravure prints of the “The Model Settlement” (first 1928 with 38 plates, second 1929, third 1930 - revised and enlarged to 50 plates). There is another similar but variant publication in oblong 8vo of 16 ll. of plates, titled Scenic Shanghai: a series of 23 views in Vandyck photogravure (Shanghai, A. S. Watson & Co. and Kelly & Walsh, ?circa 1928] (See our China in Print catalogue 2015, item 33). Both the latter oblong 8vo and the one offered here are in brown card wrappers with the oval window; the printed titles vary, however.
