A Chinese commercial guide, consisting of a collection of details and regulations respecting foreign trade with China.

By the late Hon. J. R. Morrison. Third edition, revised throughout, and made applicable to the trade as at present conducted. Canton : Printed at the Office of the Chinese Repository, 1848. Third edition. Octavo, recent half morocco over marbled papered boards, spine ruled in gilt with contrasting morocco title label lettered in gilt; pp. viii, 311, [1 blank]; large folding ‘Table of Logarithms to Accompany the Measuring Rod’ bound in at p. 292; light foxing and browning to outermost leaves, title and first leaf of text with minor closed marginal tears, last two leaves restored at margins, occasional pencilled marginalia; otherwise very clean and sound throughout.

Rare Cantonese imprint, the extensively revised third edition of this important guide for British merchants in China.

John Robert Morrison, son of the first Protestant missionary in China, Robert Morrison, was a British colonial official and interpreter. In 1834, Morrison replaced his late father as Chinese Secretary and Interpreter to the Superintendents of British Trade in China. In the same year, the first edition of his A Chinese commercial guide was published.

Morrison’s Guide proved to be an extremely useful and successful publication. In the second (1844) and third editions, published after Morrison’s death in 1843, Morrison’s name was retained on the title-page, but the text was largely rewritten by Samuel Wells Williams. The revisions were so extensive that in the fourth (1856) and fifth (1863) editions, Morrison’s name was dropped altogether and replaced by that of Williams.

The American Presbyterian missionary and linguist Samuel Wells Williams (1812-1884) arrived in China in 1833 as supervisor of the printing press of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions at Canton. He later served as editor of The Chinese Repository; collaborated with Bridgman on the Chinese Chrestomathy in the Canton Dialect (1842); assisted Walter Medhurst in completing his English-Chinese Dictionary (1848); served as Secretary of the United States Legation to China (from 1855); wrote A tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton dialect (1856); played a key role in the negotiation of the Treaty of Tientsin, which ensured toleration of both Chinese and foreign Christians; and, on his return to America, was appointed the first Professor of Chinese language and literature in the United States at Yale.

‘… supplies much valuable information respecting British commerce in Canton’ (Löwendahl).

Cordier, BS, 2177 (all five editions); Löwendahl, China illustrata nova, 901 (first edition)