Du Halde, Jean Baptiste.

First complete English edition, 2 volumes, folio (388 x 252mm.), 64 engraved maps and plates, 42 folding, contemporary blind-stamped rough calf, pp.ix-[xii] vol.1 misbound at end, vol.1 with tear in plate opposite p.281 and text of p.359 (neither with loss), minor worming at foot of title vol.2, binding slightly worn, rebacked in rough calf with new red morocco labels

Edge, J.W., eighteenth-century signature on both titles

Löwendahl 409; Cordier, Sinica 50; Lust 15

the most comprehensive survey of china printed in the eighteenth century, drawn from the accounts and surveys (both published and unpublished) of twenty-seven Jesuits. This encyclopaedic work not only provided valuable information on Chinese political institutions, education, language, medicine, science, customs and artefacts, but also included 43 maps by d'Anville. Drawn from recent surveys made by the Jesuits in China, these maps are considered by Tooley to be "the principal cartographic authority on China during the 18th century". The work also contains the first separate map of Korea, together with a previously unpublished account of that country by Jean-Baptiste Régis.