Portfolio Chinensis : or, A collection of authentic Chinese state papers illustrative of the history of the present position of affairs in China.

With a translation, notes and introduction. Macao : Printed by the Translator at the New Washington Press of F. F. de Cruz, 1840. Octavo, marbled paper wrappers; discrete private collection stamp of G.D. Musso to title page, pp xvi, 191; most of the Chinese is printed from woodblocks, with one edict by Governor Lin Tse-hsu against British merchants importing opium printed using Morrison’s movable Chinese type; the English translations are printed below the Chinese texts; a very good copy; housed in a cloth covered clam shell box with gilt morocco spine.

An important contemporary collection of Chinese documents, published in July 1840, relating to the outbreak of the Opium War. It includes edicts prohibiting the taking of and trafficking in opium.

The compiler of this veiled attack on the opium trade, Jehu Lewis Shuck, arrived in Macao in 1836 as the first American Baptist missionary in China.

‘Little difficulty was found in working in the English metal types with the Chinese wooden blocks; indeed the principle is the same precisely as that adopted with the wood-cuts employed in embellishing books printed in the English and other languages, and technically called Xylography. The paper is Chinese, and the best quality to be procured. The English types are entirely new, and this is the first time they have been used’ (preface, p. viii).

Cordier, Sinica, 1905-6 (with detailed list of papers included); Löwendahl, China Illustrata Nova, 955; Lust 478