An Outline History of the Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

First edition, presentation copy, neatly inscribed on the front free endpaper verso, "To my esteemed friends Brother and sister Burnside, With compliments of author LB". This work includes a 20-page chapter on the founding of the China mission in Fuzhou in 1847 and its early development, supported by vignettes, statistics, and biographical records of serving missionaries. An uncommon work, with the usual places showing no copies in the UK. The Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in New York in 1820 to proselytize both in the United States and abroad. By the 1870s, the church had a presence in Africa, South America, China, Japan, India, and several European countries. This work compiles invaluable statistical and biographical information concerning the church's successes in each region. For China, it covers the arrival of the first ministers, the financing of the Fuzhou operation, data on baptisms, membership, and school attendance, and the workings of the mission's printing press. Laura Stewart Bixby née Starr (c.1818-1883) prepared this volume for the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, to which it is dedicated. Bixby served for two years as corresponding secretary of the Woman's Baptist Missionary Society, founded in 1871 to improve religious outreach among women overseas. Her husband, Reverend William Bixby (1814-1889), joined the Methodist Episcopal Church aged 17 and served in different appointments in Wyoming during a 53-year career. Small octavo. Original brown sand-grain cloth, front cover lettered in gilt within blind-stamped frame, brown-coated endpapers. Cloth stained and slightly cockled, front hinge tender but still sound, small loss to contents page slightly affecting text, mild foxing and a few faint tidemarks internally. A very good copy.…