THE HISTORY OF THE TI-PING REVOLUTION BY AUGUSTUS F. LINDLEY 1866 FIRST EDITION

THE HISTORY OF THE TI-PING REVOLUTION BY AUGUSTUS F. LINDLEY 1866 FIRST EDITION

£1,500.00

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[Lin-Le (LINDLEY, Augustus F.)]. Ti-Ping Tiem-Kwoh; The History of the Ti-Ping Revolution, Including a Narrative of the Author's Personal Adventures. London: Day & Son, 1866.

First edition. Complete in two volumes; cloth-bound; hardcovers; royal octavos (27cm x 17cm); pp. xvii, [3], 424; vii, [1], 425-842. English text. Bound in original publisher's maroon pictorial gilt cloth covers with blind stamped borders, gilt illustrations at upper covers; folding colour frontispiece; 20 chromolithographs; 9 wood engravings; two folding maps; printed footnotes; appendices. Printed by Cox and Wyman. Condition: Bindings tight and secure, some bumping and rubbing to spine ends and points. Interiors complete and largely well-preserved, vol.1 title with a small hole. Scarce.

Notes: First edition. An account of Augustus F. Lindley (1840 -1873), British officer, writer and adventurer, who fought for the Taiping insurgents in their rebellion against the Manchu dynasty, one of the largest and bloodiest civil wars in history. The Taiping Rebellion (1850-64), was instigated by Hong Xiuquan and his followers, whose goal was to create a "Heavenly Kingdom" in China, with Christianity as the official religion. Lindley was a Royal Navy officer stationed in Hong Kong who resigned his commission in 1860 to work for a Taiping general as an artillery instructor. He also became a spokesperson for the cause, courting Western support and procuring weapons and supplies. His wife, Maria, the daughter of the Portuguese consul at Macau, served in the rebellion as a sniper, and was killed in an ambush. Lindley remained in China until the fall of the Heavenly Kingdom in 1864. Two years later he wrote this work, the only detailed account written of the Taiping Rebellion from the rebels' perspective.