The Fan-Qui in China.

London: Henry Colburn, Publisher,, 1838. The compulsion of strange sounds First edition, uncommon complete, of this description of China by Dr Charles Toogood Downing (1811-1873), who resided for six months in Whampoa, a stone's throw from Canton. Besides reflecting on everyday life and Sino-Western relations, Downing is particularly attentive to the colourful soundscape of the pre-Opium War city. Downing's description in volume II of Canton's river traffic exemplifies his mode of aural reportage and "captures the compulsion of strange sounds" (Irvine, p. 60): "On a sudden, you are awakened from your reverie by the violent clashing of gongs on board the passing stranger, which continue to be beaten without intermission, and with such force and jarring discord as to be almost deafening... As the junk is borne along the surface of the tide, basket after basket of crackers is raised aloft and the contents exploded, enveloping the vessel in a cloud of midst; while the tiny, sharp reports add to the harmony of the clanging brass" (p. 294). Books on China were big business in the wake of the Macartney and Amherst embassies, a situation which perhaps spurred Downing's publisher to arrange Fan-Qui according to the fashionable Victorian three-decker format. This intrusion onto the commercial territory of tried and tested accounts - by the likes of Sir George Staunton - was not appreciated by all, with one review by John Robert Morrison (himself a budding author and the son of the Staunton ally Robert Morrison) condemning Downing's predilection for "trivial observation, crude notions, idle fancies, and vain speculations" (quoted in Carroll, p. 121). Provenance: with the January 1839 ownership signature of Edward M. Gawne (1802-1871), later Speaker of the House of Keys, on the title pages. 3 vols, octavo (188 x 120 mm). Lithographed frontispieces in each vol., wood-engraved vignettes on title pages. Contemporary half calf, black spine labels, raised bands, compartments, ruled, lettered, and tooled with floral devices in gilt, spine and corners bordered with blind rolls, marbled sides and edges, grey endpapers, binder's ticket of John Mylrea (Duke Street, Douglas) on front pastedowns. Previous bookseller's pencilled notes on front free endpaper verso of vol. I. Bound without half-titles and leaf of publisher's advertisements in vol. II. Binding smart, a little rubbing to gilt tooling, text clean, light foxing to frontispieces. An excellent set. Cordier 74; Löwendahl 925; Lust 218. John Carroll, China Hands and Old Cantons: Britons and the Middle Kingdom, 2021; Thomas Irvine, Listening to China: Sound and the Sino-Western Encounter, 1770-1839, 2020.