Easy Lessons in Chinese: or Progressive Exercises to Facilitate the Study of that Language, especially Adapted to the Canton Dialect - Samuel Wells Williams 1842 - Printed at the Office of the Chinese Repository, Macao - First Edition A finely bound fiirst edition of Samuel Wells Williams’ rare ‘Easy Lessons in Chinese’. The great missionary and sinologists first published work on the Chinese language.

Illustrated with frontispiece, a folding table of characters, and the occasional vignette, in addition to numerous tables of Chinese characters and examples of Chinese text.
  Samuel Wells Williams (1812-84) went to China in 1833. First going to Canton for several months to Study Chinese and Portuguese and at the same time managing a printing press and contributing to the Chinese Repository, edited by Elijah Coleman Bridgeman. In 1835 he and the press moved to Macao. During the next decade he aided Bridgeman in preparing several reference works on Chinese language, geography and commerce including this work.

When Williams returned to the United States in 1845 he found an “unexpected degree of interest” in China as well as the common belief that the Chinese were an “uncivilized people.” Williams went out on the lecture circuit, addressing those topics about which he was most frequently asked; the notes from more than a hundred lectures became the basis for the first release of
The Middle Kingdom, a book which was “intended to correct or enlarge the views” of his fellow Westerners.

In 1853 Williams was attached to Commodore Perry's expedition to Japan as an official interpreter, and in 1855, he was appointed Secretary of the United States Legation to China and was instrumental in the negotiation of the Treaty of Tientsin, which provided for the toleration of both Chinese and foreign Christians. In 1863 he began work on this dictionary in 1863, taking almost 10 years to organize his 53,000 examples and phrases and 12.527 characters. [Lowendahl]

Williams returned to the United States in 1877 and became the first Professor of Chinese language and Chinese literature in the United States at Yale University.

Provenance: Hugh Mayer Montgomerie, M.D. (1864-1908) With his armourial bookplate (’Garde Bien’).
Obituary - The British Medical Journal [Jan, 16, 1909] - Dr. Hugh M. Montgomerie was-the only child of Dr. J. B. Montgomery, an old Penzance practitioner, and was born on July 31st, 1864. He was educated at Winchester School and Edinburgh University, where he took the degree of M.D. He also spent some time abroad, in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, studying throat and ear diseases, in which he specialized. He practised as a physician, and among other good qualities, was esteemed for his great professional kindness to the poor. Dr. Montgomerie joined the West Cornwall Infirmary as Honorary Physician about 1887, and was sole physician there for nineteen years. Since the rebuilding of the institution he had been senior of the medical staff. In the Thirties, Dr. Montgomerie's grandfather - after whom the present deceased spelt his name with "ie"- was Physician at the Infirmary, and since that time the family have worthily maintained their association with this good work, Dr. Montgomerie was Secretary of the Penzance Antiquarian Society for three years down to 1900, and in the following year he became its President. In 1898 he was President of the South-Western Branch of the British Medical Association. At one time "Dr. Hugh " was a devotee of bathing, and in his college days played football.

Reference: Lust,
Western Books on China, 1067. Cordier, Bibliotheca Sinica, 1685. Western Linguists and The Languages of China, Ganesha Publishing. Löwendahl, China illustrata nova. Supplement, 1829.

Octavo (binding size 22.2x15cm), pp. [2] [6] ix [1] 287 [1] [2].
  Bound in recent three-quarter tan calf over marbled boards, spine ruled in gilt, burgundy morocco label lettered in gilt.   Condition: Fine but for several small tears to the delicate pages and one large tear across page 97, in fine binding.   Ref: 110856   Price: HK$ 38,000