A Chinese-English Dictionary.

GILES, Herbert A.

$1,750.00

Item Number: 138229

Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, & Yokahama: Kelly & Walsh, Limited and London: Bernard Quaritch, 1912.

Finley bound second revised and enlarged edition of Giles’ monumental work, the first Chinese–English encyclopedic dictionary published. Quarto, bound in three quarters morocco, gilt titles and tooling to the spine, rebacked, all edges marbled. The present enlarged edition contains the original 13,848 Chinese character head entries alphabetically collated by Beijing Mandarin pronunciation romanized in the Wade–Giles system with the addition of 67 entries and numerous usage examples. In very good condition. Exceptionally clean internally. A nice example of the most complete Chinese-English dictionary ever published.

Herbert Giles worked for 18 years to compile and publish the 1892 first edition A Chinese-English Dictionary, which contains 10,859 character head entries plus 2,989 variant characters for a total of 13,848 entries. He decided to number every head entry—an improvement lacking in the earlier dictionaries of Morrison, Medhurst, and Williams—in order to facilitate internal cross-referencing and make it easier for users to find characters. Giles subsequently worked for 20 years revising and adding "a vast number of compounds and phrases" to the 1912 second edition, which contains 10,926 head entries (67 more) plus 2,922 variants, also totaling 13,848.