8vo, (225 x 145 mm). Set in roman and italic type, dozens of pages with a few Chinese characters set in movable type. Printed on Asian paper with horizontal chain-lines. Contemporary half blue paste-paper, plain paper sides with a near contemporary printed label (11 x 9 cm) of K.J. Ford's Circulating Library (117 Upper Street, Islington, London) with manuscript book number 1321 filled in on the label and manuscript "terms of reading this book" below the label, slightly rubbed and stained, with the spine and corners worn, but otherwise good. Occasional marginal chips and small tears and occasional minor and mostly marginal foxing, but otherwise in very good condition and nearly untrimmed, some leaves preserving the edges of the paper as it went through the press and the point holes (the sheets of Asian paper may have been neatly torn before printing to give the dimensions of a normal Western octavo).

An essential primary source for any study of missionary activities in China and Southeast Asia, with very detailed information about Chinese printing and other matters. Both the Chinese government and the Roman Catholic missionaries under the protection of the Portuguese were hostile toward the Protestant missionaries and they were forced to flee several times, eventually working in Macau, Canton, Guangzhou, Java, Singapore, Penang and Malacca. Malacca was still under Dutch control at the time of publication, but in 1824 the Dutch were to turn it over to the British, who already had a large presence there.

The book gives detailed information of the various books Morrison and Milne translated and printed, with a 66-page chapter giving a remarkably detailed account of the techniques and economics of Chinese printing, both from woodblocks and from movable type, including costs for cutting a specific number of characters and the rates of production of the Chinese workmen. This chapter also includes extensive and detailed lists of Chinese books printed by the missionary presses and an appendix gives an account of Malay books, for which Milne acknowledges information from the missionary C.H. Thomsen.

The book is based on a manuscript written by Robert Morrison at Canton in 1817, when he gave it the present title, the "ten years" meaning from his arrival in Macau in 1807 to the date of writing. In a letter of that year he noted that Milne would probably enlarge it and print it at Malacca, and Milne's preface to the present book acknowledges his debt to Morrison's manuscript and notes that he has actually taken it beyond the original ten years to cover events and activities up to 1819.

St Andrews University appears to have a later edition, still (falsely?) dated 1820 but we find no other suggestion that any further edition appeared until the book was published in Chinese translation in 2008.

The endpapers are made of British wove paper watermarked with vat number 2 and date 1820. The present label is a rare and remarkable documentation of the lending library of Kanes James Ford (1792-1886), who learned the bookseller's trade under George Lackington (1768 or 1777-1844), where he would have completed his apprenticeship around 1813 and then probably worked a few years as a journeyman. An advertisement in The Times (17 June 1822, p. 1) shows that he set up as a bookseller on his own account at 117 Upper Street in Islington by that date and he appears in imprints as publisher by 1834, but we have seen no other record of his lending library, which must have contained at least 1321 books (we have not seen his obituary in The Bookseller, 16 December 1886). His address is recorded at 6 Upper Street 1841-1846 and 178 Upper Street 1865-1868 (his son of the same name joined him as K. J. Ford & Son by 1858), so his circulating library label must date before 1841: our best guess would be ca. 1830.

With an early owner's name on an endleaf, difficult to read, a pencil date 8 July 1858 on the paste-down, and the ink stamp of the Selbourne Library on the back of the title-page and in the foot margin of another page, meaning the collection of the French-born Manchester physician and bibliophile (Henri Armand) Hugh Selbourne (1906-1973).

Rarity: we locate copies at the University of Aberdeen, National Library of Scotland, and Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and National Library of Malaysia.

VIII, 376 pp. Cordier, Sinica, col. 1222; J. Lust, Western books on China 927; The label not in the John Johnson Collection at Oxford University.