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GEORGE MACARTNEY'S MISSION TO CHINA
WITH 2 ENGRAVED FOLDING PLATES: MAP AND MUSIC
HÜTTNER, Johann Christian. Voyage a la Chine.
Paris, J.J. Fuchs, an 7 [= 1798/1799]. 18mo in 6s (12.5 x 8.5 cm). With an engraved folding map of China (18 x 19 cm) and an engraved folding plate of polyphonic music (24 x 30 cm). Map coloured in outline by a contemporary hand. Lacking the half-title. Contemporary mottled calf, gold-tooled spine, black morocco spine label, Stormont marbled endpapers, blue spinkled edges, green ribbon marker.
| Orders and Information | € 325 |
First French edition of a report of George Macartney's mission to China (1792-1794), carried out to further British trading interests, translated by T.F. Winckler from the German Nachricht von der Brittischen Gesandtschaftsreise durch China und einen Theil der Tartarei (Berlin, 1797). Hüttner (1766-1847) was part of the company that included nearly 200 academic and diplomatic members such as Leonard Staunton, George Thomas Staunton, Erasmus Gower, Hugh Gillan, William Mackintosh and John Barrow, who all wrote reports about the mission. Hüttner accompanied Thomas Staunton (the son of Sir George Staunton, Secretary to Macartney's embassy) as a tutor, and published this unofficial account of the mission to China. The accounts of this mission are useful for the descriptions of the places visited as well as Chinese customs and manners at the end of the eighteenth century. The last chapter, on Chinese song, ends with a song in French, English and German translation ("Le Rameur du Pai-ho" or "The Peyho Boatman") followed by the engraved folding music plate (with two parts in the treble clef and one part in the base), where the same song has the title "Chanson des Rameurs Chinois." The map was engraved by P.F. Tardine. It includes a 29-page index. A Dutch translation appeared in 1799.
Very good copy, with only some slight foxing. A nice little eye-witness account of eighteenth-century China, with a map and music.
