Asia
Australia
Borneo
Burma
Cambodia
China
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Japan
Macao
Malaysia
Nepal
New Zealand
Philippines
Singapore
Thailand
Tibet
Vietnam
The Eastern Seas -
George Windsor Earl
1837 - Wm. H. Allen and Co., London - First Edition
A very important association copy, with the signature of Margaret, Lady Brooke. Earl was a strong admirer of Raffles, who had died in 1826’ and Earl’s book ‘greatly impressed James Brooke, who was also an admirer of Raffles and his writings’. Brooke’s prospectus for his voyage to Singapore and then Borneo (published in October 1938), reflected the influence of Earl’s book.
An entertaining and insightful work, with extensive chapters on Indonesia, Borneo, Malaysia, and Singapore, as well as a lengthy treatise in the Appendix titled ‘Observations on the Commercial Resources of the Indian Archipelago’. Illustrated with four folding maps.
Brooke encouraged the work of Wallace, whose ‘Wallace Line’, showing the boundary between Asian and Australian faunal regions, was critical to Wallace and Darwin’s evolutionary theory. But the ‘Line’ had been earlier presented to the Royal Geographical Society by Earl in 1845, and Wallace acknowledged that ‘Earl believed that there had been a former connection between Asia and Australia’. Darwin also wrote to Wallace, after reading a draft of his paper on Malay zoogeography, to ask: ‘Are you aware that Mr. W. Earl published several years ago the view of distribution of animals in Malay Archipelago in relation to the depth of the sea between the islands?’.
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Price HK$ 9,000
1837 - Wm. H. Allen and Co., London - First Edition
A very important association copy, with the signature of Margaret, Lady Brooke. Earl was a strong admirer of Raffles, who had died in 1826’ and Earl’s book ‘greatly impressed James Brooke, who was also an admirer of Raffles and his writings’. Brooke’s prospectus for his voyage to Singapore and then Borneo (published in October 1938), reflected the influence of Earl’s book.An entertaining and insightful work, with extensive chapters on Indonesia, Borneo, Malaysia, and Singapore, as well as a lengthy treatise in the Appendix titled ‘Observations on the Commercial Resources of the Indian Archipelago’. Illustrated with four folding maps.
Brooke encouraged the work of Wallace, whose ‘Wallace Line’, showing the boundary between Asian and Australian faunal regions, was critical to Wallace and Darwin’s evolutionary theory. But the ‘Line’ had been earlier presented to the Royal Geographical Society by Earl in 1845, and Wallace acknowledged that ‘Earl believed that there had been a former connection between Asia and Australia’. Darwin also wrote to Wallace, after reading a draft of his paper on Malay zoogeography, to ask: ‘Are you aware that Mr. W. Earl published several years ago the view of distribution of animals in Malay Archipelago in relation to the depth of the sea between the islands?’.
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Price HK$ 9,000
Among Primitive Peoples in Borneo -
Ivor H. N. Evans
1922 - J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia - First Edition
A scarce and considered one of the best, early works on the tribes of Northern Borneo [Sabah]
With 21 black and white photographic plates and folding map.
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Price HK$ 1,800
1922 - J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia - First Edition
A scarce and considered one of the best, early works on the tribes of Northern Borneo [Sabah]With 21 black and white photographic plates and folding map.
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Price HK$ 1,800
Personal Narrative of Three Years’ Service in China -
Lt.-Colonel Arthur A’Court Fisher – Royal Engineers
1863 - Richard Bentley, London - First Edition
Lt.-Colonel Fisher’s three years of service, are in Canton, the Pei-Ho River, and Taku Fort battles, throughout the the Second Opium War. Illustrated with three wood-engraved plates, engraved plan, six in-text engravings and three folding maps at rear.
This not one of your more dry ‘Personal Narrative’ accounts, and is very much in the ‘Personal’. Entertainingly written, one wonders if Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Agincourt Fisher was in any way related to Harry Flashman....
Lt-Colonel Fisher begins his tales with the action at the Battle of Canton in late 1857, he remains in Canton, occupying his spare time with various adventures and sport (Cricket in Hong Kong, shooting snipe and riding ponies across the Canton countryside ‘Paper-Hunt’ style), and visits to Hong Kong and islands. Fisher then moves up the Pei-Ho River and is involved with the battles around the Taku Forts, as well as surveying the ‘Great Wall’, returning once again to the skirmishes on the Pei-Ho and around Canton. After the third and final ‘Battle of Taku Forts’ at the end of August 1860, Fisher is preparing to head to Peking but is taken sick and forced to spend two months on the hospital ship ‘Mauritius’ whilst hearing news from other wounded officers of the battles around Peking and the looting of the Summer Palace. In November of 1860 Fisher’s service in China ends with his shipment back to England.
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Price HK$ 11,000
1863 - Richard Bentley, London - First Edition
Lt.-Colonel Fisher’s three years of service, are in Canton, the Pei-Ho River, and Taku Fort battles, throughout the the Second Opium War. Illustrated with three wood-engraved plates, engraved plan, six in-text engravings and three folding maps at rear.This not one of your more dry ‘Personal Narrative’ accounts, and is very much in the ‘Personal’. Entertainingly written, one wonders if Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Agincourt Fisher was in any way related to Harry Flashman....
Lt-Colonel Fisher begins his tales with the action at the Battle of Canton in late 1857, he remains in Canton, occupying his spare time with various adventures and sport (Cricket in Hong Kong, shooting snipe and riding ponies across the Canton countryside ‘Paper-Hunt’ style), and visits to Hong Kong and islands. Fisher then moves up the Pei-Ho River and is involved with the battles around the Taku Forts, as well as surveying the ‘Great Wall’, returning once again to the skirmishes on the Pei-Ho and around Canton. After the third and final ‘Battle of Taku Forts’ at the end of August 1860, Fisher is preparing to head to Peking but is taken sick and forced to spend two months on the hospital ship ‘Mauritius’ whilst hearing news from other wounded officers of the battles around Peking and the looting of the Summer Palace. In November of 1860 Fisher’s service in China ends with his shipment back to England.
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Price HK$ 11,000
Sport on the Nilgiris and in Wynaad -
F. W. F. Fletcher
1911 - Macmillan & Co., London - First Edition
‘Fletcher introduces both the terrain and the history of the Nilgiris and Wynaad regions in India, then provides big game chapters on a species-by-species basis. Each of these chapters features not only the natural history of the animals, but also the author's experiences hunting them. Included are chapters devoted to elephant, tiger, leopards, bison, beer, tahr, ibex, sambur, and other deer species.
Fletcher switched from a .450 rifle to a .600 Jeffery: “In cold blood the recoil from his rifle is somewhat severe; but in the excitement of shooting it is not noticeable.”’ - Czech.
Illustrated with 18 plates, and folding coloured map as frontispiece.
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Price HK$ 2,200
1911 - Macmillan & Co., London - First Edition
‘Fletcher introduces both the terrain and the history of the Nilgiris and Wynaad regions in India, then provides big game chapters on a species-by-species basis. Each of these chapters features not only the natural history of the animals, but also the author's experiences hunting them. Included are chapters devoted to elephant, tiger, leopards, bison, beer, tahr, ibex, sambur, and other deer species.Fletcher switched from a .450 rifle to a .600 Jeffery: “In cold blood the recoil from his rifle is somewhat severe; but in the excitement of shooting it is not noticeable.”’ - Czech.
Illustrated with 18 plates, and folding coloured map as frontispiece.
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Price HK$ 2,200
A Journey to the Tea Countries of China; including Sung-Lo and the Bohea Hills; with A Short Notice of the East India Company’s Tea Plantations in the Himalaya Mountains -
Robert Fortune
1852 - John Murray, London - First Edition
An exceptional and thus rare example of this scarce account by one of the greatest 19th century plant hunters. Fortune returned to China in 1848 on behalf of the East India Company to collect plants and seeds of the tea-shrub. The tea growing methods of the Chinese were secret so he had to disguise himself as a Chinese native, and by so doing, learnt their methods and also obtained large numbers of plants and seeds, which in 1951 he successfully introduced into the north-west provinces of India.
In this work Fortune provides excellent descriptions of Hong Kong and China, of Chinese customs, industry, language and flora, missionary activity, opium consumption, and the cultivation and processing of tea. With a full page map of China outlined in colour, and illustrated with three lithographic plates (two of which are tinted), extra woodcut title page, and 12 in-text woodcuts (one full page).
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Price HK$ 20,000
1852 - John Murray, London - First Edition
An exceptional and thus rare example of this scarce account by one of the greatest 19th century plant hunters. Fortune returned to China in 1848 on behalf of the East India Company to collect plants and seeds of the tea-shrub. The tea growing methods of the Chinese were secret so he had to disguise himself as a Chinese native, and by so doing, learnt their methods and also obtained large numbers of plants and seeds, which in 1951 he successfully introduced into the north-west provinces of India.In this work Fortune provides excellent descriptions of Hong Kong and China, of Chinese customs, industry, language and flora, missionary activity, opium consumption, and the cultivation and processing of tea. With a full page map of China outlined in colour, and illustrated with three lithographic plates (two of which are tinted), extra woodcut title page, and 12 in-text woodcuts (one full page).
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Price HK$ 20,000
Flashman and the Mountain of Light - From the Flashman Papers 1845-46 - SIGNED -
George MacDonald Fraser
1990 - Collins Harvill, London - First Edition
The ninth packet of the Flashman papers, spanning 1845-46, with the mighty Sikh Khalsa, the finest army ever seen in Asia, poised to invade India and sweep Britannia’s ill-guarded empire into the sea, every able-bodied man was needed to defend the frontier – and one at least had his answer ready when the Call of Duty came: ‘I’ll swim in blood first!’
Alas, though, for poor Flashman, there was no avoiding the terrors of secret service in the debauched and intrigue-ridden Court of the Punjab, the attentions of its beautiful nymphomaniac Maharani (not that he minded that, really), the horrors of its torture chambers or the baleful influence of the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond, the Mountain of Light.
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Price HK$ 2,000
1990 - Collins Harvill, London - First Edition
The ninth packet of the Flashman papers, spanning 1845-46, with the mighty Sikh Khalsa, the finest army ever seen in Asia, poised to invade India and sweep Britannia’s ill-guarded empire into the sea, every able-bodied man was needed to defend the frontier – and one at least had his answer ready when the Call of Duty came: ‘I’ll swim in blood first!’Alas, though, for poor Flashman, there was no avoiding the terrors of secret service in the debauched and intrigue-ridden Court of the Punjab, the attentions of its beautiful nymphomaniac Maharani (not that he minded that, really), the horrors of its torture chambers or the baleful influence of the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond, the Mountain of Light.
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Price HK$ 2,000
Round Kangchenjunga -
Douglas W. Freshfield
1903 - Edward Arnold, London - First Edition
Freshfield’s incredible account of his dangerous and exhausting circuit of Kangchenjunga, considered one of the greatest early works on Himalayan exploration, and a standard reference to the Kangchenjunga massif. The party’s entire route followed previously unknown areas, much of it at a great height: they climbed the Zemu glacier reaching 5,350 metres, then crossed the Lhonak valley and proceeded west over Jongsong La into Nepal, descending along Kangchenjunga glacier, before trekking ahead to Tseram and finally crossing back to Sikkim.
Accompanying Freshfield was Italian photographer Vittorio Sella, whose remarkable photographs feature in this book.
Profusely illustrated with two large folding colour maps of Sikkim and the glaciers of Kangchenjunga, forty full page black and white plates, two in-text illustrations of the peaks of Kathmandu and a geological map of Sikkim, and one folding panoramic black and white photographic plate of Kangchenjunga Glacier, taken by Sella.
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Price HK$ 6,500
1903 - Edward Arnold, London - First Edition
Freshfield’s incredible account of his dangerous and exhausting circuit of Kangchenjunga, considered one of the greatest early works on Himalayan exploration, and a standard reference to the Kangchenjunga massif. The party’s entire route followed previously unknown areas, much of it at a great height: they climbed the Zemu glacier reaching 5,350 metres, then crossed the Lhonak valley and proceeded west over Jongsong La into Nepal, descending along Kangchenjunga glacier, before trekking ahead to Tseram and finally crossing back to Sikkim.Accompanying Freshfield was Italian photographer Vittorio Sella, whose remarkable photographs feature in this book.
Profusely illustrated with two large folding colour maps of Sikkim and the glaciers of Kangchenjunga, forty full page black and white plates, two in-text illustrations of the peaks of Kathmandu and a geological map of Sikkim, and one folding panoramic black and white photographic plate of Kangchenjunga Glacier, taken by Sella.
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Price HK$ 6,500
The Shop Signs of Peking -
H. K. Fung
1931 - Issued by the Chinese Painting Association of Peking, China - Edition Limited to 100 Copies
A beautifully hand coloured book showing the signs used by Chinese shopkeepers to advertise their trade, with 101 hand-coloured illustrations of shop signs each accompanied by the Chinese and English description, together with a forward in English by H. K. Fung.
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Price HK$ 47,000
1931 - Issued by the Chinese Painting Association of Peking, China - Edition Limited to 100 Copies
A beautifully hand coloured book showing the signs used by Chinese shopkeepers to advertise their trade, with 101 hand-coloured illustrations of shop signs each accompanied by the Chinese and English description, together with a forward in English by H. K. Fung.
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Price HK$ 47,000