Annals & Memoirs Of The Court Of Peking. (From The 16Th To The 20Th Century). Bland, J. O. P., & Edmund Backhouse.

First edition, first impression, US issue, from the library of the China-based plant hunter William Purdom. Loosely inserted is a letter from his sister, Nellie, to Purdom's close friend and financial backer Charles Henry Hough, in which she gifts him this copy - one of "Billy's" favourite reads - and discusses the winding up of her brother's affairs in China following his untimely death. William Purdom (1880-1921) was born into a gardening family and joined the Veitch nursery at the age of 18. In 1902, he moved to Kew Gardens and led the 1909-12 Veitch-Arnold Arboretum plant hunting expedition to China. In 1914-5, he returned to China with Reginald Farrer to explore Gansu and collect specimens suitable for the British climate. While Farrer decided to return to Britain, Purdom remained in China and worked as a forestry advisor to the Chinese government until dying of illness in 1921. Before his extended stay in China, Purdom became friends with Charles Hough (1855-1933), a physician and former county and MCC cricketer. In 1904, Purdom helped Hough design and construct a garden for his arts and crafts home at Loughrigg Fell, and Hough covered part of the cost of Purdom's expedition with Farrer the following decade. Nellie Purdom (1889-1985) followed her brother to China and taught at Tientsin Grammar School in the 1910s and 1920s. Following his death, she assumed responsibility for dispersing his library and possessions. Writing to Hough from the grammar school on 28 February 1922, she states that "I sent you a book from Billy's library by book post a fortnight ago. I hope you have not got a copy already. He was very fond of those "Annals" and it was one of the books he took on his railway car. I am selling the Chinese section of his library to the Rockefeller Institute in Peking as it is useless to bring it home. It is very comforting to hear from my sister that you all have been so kind to father & mother and they I know appreciate it as much as we are grateful. If you have any home seeds of a tree which Billy admired and you would like them planted near his grave, if you forward me some I will get the Constable to sow them. Many people are planting trees to his memory but they are all Chinese trees and it would be so nice to have a little bit of Brathay too". J. O. P. Bland and Edmund Backhouse collaborated on two popular and controversial histories of imperial China, the first being China Under the Empress Dowager (1910). In both cases, Bland was taken in by material supposedly written by Chinese court insiders but, in actuality, almost entirely fabricated by Backhouse. "Bland's elegantly written histories left him remembered as unwitting dupe of one of the strangest British participants in the China scene" (ODNB). The extent of Backhouse's duplicity, and the broader Bland-Backhouse drama, was exposed in Hugh Trevor-Roper's Hermit of Peking (1976). The US issue is bound with the same sheets and case as the British issue and can be distinguished by a variant title page. Octavo. Original red cloth, spine and front cover lettered in black, front board blocked in gilt. Tissue-guarded half-tone photographic frontispiece, 23 plates, folding panorama of Forbidden City. Recent Japanese bookseller's ticket on front pastedown, mid-century pencil inscription on front free endpaper. Spine and rear cover lightly sunned, front board bright, occasional spotting internally: a near-fine copy.