Beschreibung:

MEDHURST, Walter Henry (1796-1857). A Dictionary of the Hok-Keen Dialect of the Chinese Language . Macao: G.J. Steyn and Brother at the Honorable East India Company's Press, 1832 [1837]. Square 2° (283 x 221mm). Chinese characters and roman type. (One or two minor marginal tears.) Contemporary black leather, blue sprinkled edges (lightly worn at extremities, neat splits at joints, small chip at head of spine). Provenance : contemporary annotations providing alternative pronunciation, mostly in Mandarin, up to p.119 -- G.C. Barrello (pencilled inscription dated 4 May 1843). FIRST EDITION, and one of the earliest accounts of a Chinese dialect. Medhurst writes in his introduction that, whereas general accounts of the Chinese language may have preceded it, his Dictionary was, to his knowlege, the first to elucidate the Hok-keen or Emoey tongue. A printer and missionary, Medhurst spent his career in China and Malaysia, at first printing in Malacca and then preaching - including in Hokkien - there, in Batavia, Penang, Java, Bali, Shanghai (where he established the first mission press) and elsewhere in China. An advertisement in the volume states that printing, having commenced in 1831, was interrupted in 1834 with the dissolution of the East India Company's China branch, until Medhurst raised necessary funds by subscription for publication, which resumed at Macao with the Company's font of Chinese type. It was thus the first book printed at the Macao press under Wells Williams. Cordier Bib. Sinica 1596.