Parapattan/Batavia Imprint - Medhurst's "Chinese and English Dictionary" - 1842 - Volume 1 (of 2) only

"Chinese and English Dictionary. Containing all the words in the Chinese imperial dictionary, arranged according to the radicals"

-Walter Henry Medhurst (1796-1857)

-Published at Parapattan (Batavia) in 1842

-Vol. 1 (of 2) only

-Complete: xxiv, 648, 29 pages of lithographed characters

-Internally near fine- some toning and marks. 19th Century quarter calf binding with cracking to spine and boards which are loose.

-With Dutch private ownership stamp and note to inner flyleaf stating that it was purchased at Quaritch in 1876 for £4

Medhurst complied this Chinese dictionary as a more accessible alternative to Morrison's earlier monumental Chinese-English dictionary (which was published in 6 large volumes between 1815-1823). The work was published at Medhurst's own expense at Parapattan in Batavia (modern day Jakarta), in a edition of 600 copies. The volumes were published separately - the first volume was completed in October 1842 and the second in May 1843.

The dictionary was arranged according to the radical-and-stroke system based on the 214 Kangxi radicals which Morrison had also used.  Volume I contains 648 pages of entries, covering characters from Radical 1 一 (“one”) through to Radical 111 矢 (“arrow”), followed by 50 pages of supplementary material. The preliminary matter includes an eleven-page preface, a three-page table of radicals, and five pages of guidance entitled “Directions for discovering under what Radical any given character may be found.” The volume concludes with a twenty-nine-page appendix which shows lithographs of obsolete and vulgar characters not included in the main body of the dictionary.

Walter Henry Medhurst was a British Protestant Missionary who spent much of his life in China. Having attended St Pauls school and the Hackney Theological College, he moved to Asia in 1819 - where he would stay for over 35 years until 1856. He was initially based in Batavia and Malacca. A talented linguist, Medhurst compiled dictionaries of Chinese, Japanese and Hokkien which were published in Macao and Batavia in the 1830s and 1840s. After the opening of Chinese treaty ports following the 1842 treaty of Nanking which concluded the Opium wars, he moved to Shanghai. In Shanghai he was instrumental in the output of the Shanghai Mission Press, publishing and translating linguistic material, theological tracts, and Chinese culturural material.