NOTES AND QUERIES
125
CHINESE BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY OF
THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY LONDON
Volume I of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society contained a short account of a collection of Chinese books presented by Sir George T. Staunton to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1824. In this note I suggested that it would be valuable if a catalogue of these books together with their titles in Chinese was to be compiled. As a result of this note I have now received further information on this subject.
Mr. J. D. Pearson, Librarian of the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, who spent three months in Hong Kong early in 1962, informed me that the Rev. Samuel Kidd, Professor of Chinese at University College London, compiled a Catalogue of the Chinese Library of the Royal Asiatic Society which was printed in 1838.*
Also I received a letter from Mr. P. van der Loon, Lecturer in Chinese at the University of Cambridge, drawing my attention to an article printed in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1890 which gives information on the sources through which the Chinese books in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society in London were obtained.
Thus my original note fulfilled the intention of this section of the Journal devoted to Notes and Queries, namely that of bringing certain information to the notice of readers and stimulating them to contribute further information on these subjects. It is hoped that other notes printed in this section will provoke similar information in the future.
J. L. CRANMER-BYNG.
* London, John W. Parker, pp. 58. The edition was limited to 500 copies. The Chinese titles are given in a form of romanization but without any Chinese characters.