moor john henry (1 Ergebnisse)

Quarto, with a large folding handcoloured frontispiece map and five folding maps (all but one handcoloured), in original binding of marbled boards with a backstrip of fine linen, remains of printed paper label. First edition: a great Singapore rarity, one of the first books to be published there, and including the earliest detailed map of Singapore Town and its surroundings, "The Town and environs of Singapore", based on a survey by G.D. Coleman. Published just after the island had become the capital of the Straits Settlements, it marks the beginning of the colony's enormous growth as a regional trading hub and the centre of the rubber industry. John Henry Moor moved to Singapore from Malacca in 1830 and became editor of the Singapore Chronicle, Singapore's first newspaper, in 1831. The book is mainly composed of his articles written for the Chronicle between 1824 and 1834. "Notices has claimed its place in history as a valuable record of Singapore's early years and is one of the first books published on the island. It curates studies on the Indian archipelago - present-day Indonesia, East Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, East Timor and Singapore - that were republished from newspapers or journals, including many from Singapore Chronicle, Singapore's first English newspaper. of which no known copies from 1824 to 1826 remain; his publishing project therefore preserved some precious articles that would otherwise have been lost forever. "One such article is an account of John Crawfurd's formal possession of Singapore and its adjacent islands in 1825. Crawfurd, who was appointed Resident of Singapore in 1823, set off in August 1825 on a 10-day journey around Singapore on his ship the Malabar and landed at Pulau Ubin. There, the British flag was hoisted and the 21-gun salute fired as part of the ceremonial proceedings. The account also includes Crawfurd's notes on Singapore's outlying islands and Bukit Timah Hill; these are all documented in "Journal of a Voyage Round the Island of Singapore", one of six articles in the volume of direct relevance to Singapore" (National Library, Singapore, online article "The Book that almost didn't happen"). Moor, who later moved to the Singapore Free Press, was the first headmaster of the Raffles Institution from 1834, and established the first free library in Singapore, which subsequently became Singapore's National Library. The technology to print the maps was not available in Singapore at the time and Moor arranged for them to be printed at the Oriental Lithographic Press in Calcutta, set up by the French émigré Jean-Baptiste Tassin to print government maps, which helped to cause a near two-year delay in the publication. This and other problems with the production led to the abandonment of an originally planned second volume. . Provenance: Ink inscription on title-page presenting the book to an indecipherable name "A Present from Dr Martin 13 Aug 1845". This may feasibly have been M.J. Martin, the doctor who owned the Singapore Dispensary, an advertiser in the Singapore Chronicle from 1832. Occasional spotting due to paper type, neatly repaired tears to frontispiece map and another two folding maps; oxidisation to some colour outlining on all maps; joints of the binding neatly repaired; generally extremely good.