A grammar of the Chinese language. (John Francis Davis’ copy)

Serampore : Printed at the Mission Press, 1815. Quarto (275 x 215 mm), half calf over marbled papered boards, spine in compartments with contrasting morocco title labels lettered in gilt; marbled edges; title with ownership signature of ‘J. F. Davis’; pp vi, [2], 280; text in English and Chinese characters; occasional marginal damp staining with minor restoration to a few leaves (not affecting text), otherwise a very good copy.

A landmark work in the history of missionary activity in China.

This unique copy has a highly significant association, having originally belonged to diplomat and sinologist (later Sir) John Francis Davis (1795-1890). Davis was appointed writer at the East India Company’s factory in Canton (Guangzhou) in 1813, completed a translation of The Three Dedicated Rooms (San-Yu-Low) in 1815, accompanied Lord Amherst on his embassy to Peking in 1816, and would later in life serve as the second Governor of Hong Kong, 1844-48.

First edition of this important work. Robert Morrison (1732-1834), missionary and translator, was a prolific writer in both Chinese and English. The first Protestant Missionary to China, he arrived in Canton in 1807. There he became translator to the East India Company, and pursued his work on the Chinese language. His monumental Chinese dictionary was published in three parts from 1815-23. This dictionary is his best known work today. His lesser-known Grammar was intended to help Westerners with the basics of Chinese. Published slightly before his dictionary, in 500 copies, it was seen through the press by the missionary, Joshua Marshman, who played a prominent part in translating the scriptures into the Oriental languages.

Morrison is believed to have begun work on his Grammar as early as 1807, and completed the manuscript in 1811 (the preface is dated Macao 1811), sending this off to Joshua Marshman at the Serampore Mission Press in India for printing soon afterwards. Following several delays, it was finally printed in 1815, a year after Marshman had printed his own grammar book (Elements of Chinese Grammar) on the same press. Morrison’s is therefore the first grammar book written on Chinese grammar in English, but it is not the first published. This dubious chronology has caused much debate amongst scholars of missionary history and the Chinese language, as the question arises as to whether Marshman had copied Morrison’s work in his own Grammar. Many scholars share the view that ‘it is very hard to believe that Marshman had not consulted Morrison’s manuscript during the period of about a year before his book was published’ (Su, 1996). In a letter addressed to the directors of the press, Morrison complained that Marshman’s text was ‘a Grammar, compiled chiefly from mine, which [Marshman] kept lying by him in MS. whilst he took the substance of it, dressed it up, with other examples, and a few alterations, and gave it to the world as his own’ (Su, 1996). Despite his Grammar emerging after Marshman’s, Morrison’s work was a success, and was considered by his contemporaries ‘a valuable work, short and comprehensive’ (Lowndes, 1834).

Cordier, Sinica, 1661-2; Lust, 1023; Graesse IV, 612