Monkey. WU (Ch'eng-en).

Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley.

Title-page designed by Duncan Grant.

First English Edition. 8vo. [221 x 147 x 21 mm]. 305, [1] pp. Bound in publisher's original orange cloth, front cover and spine lettered in green. In dust wrapper designed by Duncan Grant. (Wrapper with loss at head of spine, price-clipped and a little dust soiled.)
London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1942

A few spots to the fore-edge but a very good copy, which remains partly unopened. Ink ownership stamp of Arthur W. Cox and "86" in red pen on front endleaf.

"Monkey is a sixteenth-century Chinese novel, strangely compunded of adventure, popular folklore, Buddhist mysticism and pure poetry. It is a Pilgrim's Progress that is reigious without being pietistic. It is unique in its combination of beauty with absurdity, of profundity with nonsense. It has probably been more widely read in the whole Far East than any other novel. It has, in supplying subjects for drama, played almost as important a part in China as the Ramayana still plays in Hindu drama" - from the dust wrapper.

Stock no. ebc7581