An Account of the Structure of Chinese Characters: Under 300 Primary Forms

Primary text in English, ancillary text in Chinese. Full title: An account of the structure of Chinese characters, under 300 primary forms; after the Shwoh-Wan, 100, A.D., and the Phonetic Shwoh-Wan, 1833. Originally published in London in 1882 by Trübner & Co., apparently in paperback form. This is the hardback edition of 1911 by Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai. Stated second edition. Printed in Shanghai by Kelly & Walsh. Approx. 8.75 x 5.75 inches. Cinnamon brown buckram hardboards, with fairly crisp black lettering to the front and the spine. Moderately bumped spine head and tail, and with bumped corners as well. A reasonably clean binding. Text block firmly bound in, except that the first page signature is somewhat loose. With viii and 199 numbered pages on matte stock, lightly and uniformly age-yellowed. Index includes phonetics, sub-phonetics, and characters with independent sound, in the order in which they occur in the "concise dictionary on the basis of K'anghi." Also included is the fully intact fold-out sheet, The Three Hundred Primary Forms of Chinese Writing. With characters printed in red and black, a very clean front sheet; the reverse side, blank, with minor soiling. The sheet formerly tipped in, now fully and cleanly detached. No dust jacket, presumably as issued. A Good Plus copy. Scarce in any condition. 1 lb. 2 oz. This copy formerly sold by the estimable London book dealers, Han-Shan Tang Books, and with their sticker neatly affixed to the top of the rear pastedown. This book is a historical linguistic book by Scottish missionary and sinologist John Chalmers [1825-1899]. It is an important scholarly work. Based on classic Chinese dictionaries like the Shuowen Jiezi (100 A.D.), it analyzes how complex Chinese words grow from fewer than 300 root graphics. Chalmers argues that the core base of Chinese writing rests on fewer than 300 basic pictographic roots. As to radicals and sounds, he explained how these primary shapes combine to form semantic radicals and phonetic components. He relied on ancient lexicography to trace character evolution.…