[20th-CENTURY Pre-REVOLUTIONARY CHINA: Two works]

Henry George Wandesforde WOODHEAD (1883-1959).  The Yangtse and its problems. [Shanghai:] The Mercury Press, 1931. Octavo (9 x 6 1/8in; 229 x 156mm). Pp. [i-xii; 1]-150. 1 folding plate, 20 other half-tone images from photographs printed on 6 leaves, various advertisements at the beginning and the end. (Some toning). Original brown cloth, lettered in dark brown (spine chipped and bumped at head and foot).  

Rare on the market: ‘the articles which are reprinted in this volume were contributed from day to day to the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury, during an up-river trip which lasted from May 20 to July 16, 1931’ (introduction).

[and:]

John MACGOWAN (1835-1922). Lights and Shadows of Chinese Life. Shanghai: North China Daily News & Herald Ltd., 1909. Octavo (8 3/8 x 5 1/4in; 213 x 133mm). Pp. [i-xii, 1]-308 pp., 21 plates featuring 27 half-tone images from photographs. Original cloth, blocked in black and green (soiled and chipped).  photographic illustrations including frontispiece, original cloth binding.  (Soiled and faded, spine chipped at head and foot). Provenance: EOJ (monogram); Clark Worswick (photographer, author and photographic historian, penciled inscription noting purchase in 1977,  and penciled highlighting to various passages).

"China is a great country and is inhabited by a great people, and in the coming years, under the influence of forces that have uplifted the nations of the West, there will be, I believe, as many astounding surprises in all departments of life and thought as have been witnessed in them" (preface). Spine sunned. (2)