CHINESE GRAMMAR

Elemens de la grammaire chinoise, ou, Principes generaux du kou-wen ou style antique, et du kouan-hoa.  By Jean-Pierre (Abel) Remusat.  xxxii, 214, [2] pp.  Illustrated with 2 folding plates and innumerable Chinese characters executed in woodcut throughout.  8vo., 230 x 155 mm, bound in contemporary calf with the front wrapper, printed on yellow paper, bound in.   Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1822.

 First Edition, a fine copy of this early Chinese grammar book which features both Literary Chinese and Mandarin.  It was a major achievement of Chinese philology in the early nineteenth century, as well as being one of the earliest successful books with movable Chinese and Roman types.  The folding lithograph plates were executed by Charles Philibert de Lasteyrie de Saillant. 

Rémusat (1788-1832), along with Julius Klaproth, is recognized as one of the founders of modern Oriental scholarship in the West.  In 1811 he produced an Essai sur la langue de la literature chinoise, and a paper on foreign languages among the Chinese, which procured him the patronage of Silvestre de Sacy.  In 1814 a chair of Chinese was founded at the College de France for Rémusat.  

From this time he gave himself wholly to the languages of the Far East, and published a series of classic works, among which his contributions from Chinese sources to the history of the Tatar nations claim special notice.  Rémusat became an editor of the Journal de Savants in 1818, and founder and first secretary of the Paris Asiatic Society in 1822.  Between 1821 and 1831, Rémusat's heated scholarly correspondance with Wilhelm von Humbolt on the Chinese language is well documented in Lettres édifiantes et curieuses sur la langue chinoise: Un débat philosophico-grammatical (1999). 

Lust 1027.  Brunet IV, 1216.  See Walravens, China Illustrata p. 269.  Not in Cordier