The Land of the Dragon. My Boating and Shooting Excursions to the Gorges of the Upper Yangtze. With a Map of the Author's Route.
London: Hurst and Blackett, 1889. First Edition. 8o. vii, 338 pp; 16 pp publisher's catalog. Wood-engraved frontispiece of "The Bund, Shanghai" with tissue guard, vignette of "The Little Orphan" on title page; fold-out map in blue and black. Publisher's blue cloth with gilt dragon and red & gilt lettering to front cover, later gold silk brocade covered spine and corners. Minor wear to extremities; rear hinge cracked at pg. 337; light soiling to spine; else a near fine copy in a striking binding. Item #20112
"... a lively account of William Spencer Percival's daily life as a British civil servant working in Shanghai at the end of the nineteenth century... Percival takes his 'sympathetic' British friends' prejudices about China as pretext to give a thorough account of his life in the East. He delights in relating his boating and hunting excursions in the Chinese countryside, and his adventures - camping out, shooting pigs, and towing through rapids - are packed with often extraordinary anecdotes about the land, the Chinese people, and other foreigners, including American and Roman Catholic missionaries. Part travel diary, part anthropological study, this book gives a valuable insight into the relationship between the British and the people of Qing dynasty China." - Google Books.
Price: $750.00