THOMSON’S CHINA
THOMSON, John.
Illustrations of China and its People. A Series of two Hundred Photographs, with letterpress descriptive of the places and people represented.
London, Sampson Low &c, 1873–1874.
Four vols, folio, 96 autotype plates; occasional foxing, not affecting plates, but withal a very good set; bound in the original pictorial cloth, gilt, all edges gilt; sympathetically rebacked.
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Illustrations of China and its People. A Series of two Hundred Photographs, with letterpress descriptive of the places and people represented.
A good copy of this rare work (vol. I marked second edition, the rest first editions), showing superb images of Imperial China including rare portraits of high government officials as well as a large number of architectural and scenic views; this item ranks amongst the most spectacular photographically illustrated books on China published during the nineteenth century.
John Thomson (1837–1921) moved to Hong Kong in 1868 where he opened a studio but spent much of the following four years travelling through China before returning to England in 1872. Sampson Low used a patented process called autotype to reproduce Thomson’s photographs with the highest possible accuracy; autotype is a form of collotype which comes very close to the high resolution of the original albumen-prints but due to the cost very few books were published using this technique.
Apparently only 600 copies were printed of volumes I and II, a small print run that was later increased to 750 copies for volumes III and IV. This means that 150 additional copies were printed of volumes I and II in 1874 with the addendum ‘2nd edition’ on the title-page (presumably in order to suggest that it was selling well). However, it is in all other aspects part of, and identical to the first edition. They were sold for £3/3s per volume, a very substantial amount at the time.
See Ovenden, John Thomson (1837–1921), p. 32–33. Cordier I, 94; Roosens/Salu, History of Photography – Bibliography of Books, 10391; Colnaghi: Photography; The first eighty years, 325.
