Notitia linguæ Sinicæ. Auctore P. Premare (with acknowledgement leaf)

Malaccæ : Cura et sumptibus Collegii Anglo-Sinici [Anglo-Chinese College], 1831. First edition. Quarto (230 x 183 mm), plain wrappers stitch-bound in the Chinese manner; title leaf with pencil annotations, acknowledgement leaf (sometimes not bound in), pp. [1]-262 (numbering erratic at pp. 144-149 as in all copies), [2 blank], 28 (Index, with a short tear internally at pp. [1] – 2), with two front and two rear blank leaves; text in Latin, with passages and examples in Chinese characters throughout; general wear and light staining, corners chipped and curled to first few leaves, a very good copy housed in a custom folding clamshell box of half crushed morocco over marbled papered boards, spine in compartments with raised bands, lettered in gilt.

The French Jesuit Father Joseph Prémare (1666-1736) worked as a missionary in Guangxi from 1699 until 1724, and subsequently, after banishment by the Yongzheng Emperor, in Macau, where he remained until his death. He completed his Notitia linguae sinicae in 1729, and the following year his original manuscript entered the collection of the Bibliothèque Royale in Paris. Notitia linguae sinicae would surely have become a landmark work on the Chinese language in the West in the eighteenth century, yet it was not published until almost a hundred years after his death. Offered here is the first edition, printed on the Anglo-Chinese press in Malacca in 1831.

Three individuals were chiefly responsible for Prémare’s work finally appearing in print. The first of these was Stanislas Julien (1797-1873), a student of the great French sinologist Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat. (Julien would take over from Abel-Rémusat as Chair of Chinese at the Collège de France after the latter’s death in 1832, a position he held for over 40 years). It was Julien who, in the early 1820s, made at least two manuscript copies of Prémare’s original manuscript, one of which was acquired by missionary and sinologist Robert Morrison, President of the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca. Morrison presented this manuscript copy to the College in 1826. An anonymous patron later funded the publication of Prémare’s work at the College’s press in 1831.

Cordier, BS 1664-1669 has detailed notes on not only the first edition of Notitia linguæ Sinicæ but also the various known manuscript versions and other nineteenth-century printed editions. It is worth noting that the present example has the variant imprint Cura et sumptibus Collegii Anglo-Sinici rather than the better known Cura Academiæ Anglo-Sinensis.