Into China - WITH Dust Jacket and Review Slip
New York: The Macmillan Company, (1940). First Edition. Hardcover with Dust Jacket. Small 4to. Pp. 298, [1]. Frontis. photo. Illustrated with 15 black-and-white photo plates. Bound in salmon-colored cloth with gilt lettering stamped on spine. Top corners a tad bumped. With the Macmillan Company review slip laid-in indicating publication date will be January, 1941, and asking for clippings of reviews be remitted to the publisher. The $3.00 price intact on front flap. In the pictorial dust jacket showing wear and shallow chips at head and tail of spine and along rear panel/rear flap edge. Near Fine / Very Good-. Item #6076 A timely publication given the importance of the Burma Road in circumventing Japanese-controlled coastal China.The road had served as a conduit for supplies to Free China, behind Japanese lines, and a route to England’s crown jewel, India. In 1942, when the Japanese invaded Burma, with great ferocity some months before the action was anticipated, the Burma Road was closed. Thereafter supplies were flown, often precariously, over the Hump into Kungming and greater Yunnan Province. The dust jacket presents a wonderful depiction, uncredited, of the Burma Road leading to a shining city, its tidiness belying the dire mess that thoroughfare would become. Dust jacket is now housed in a removable, clear archival sleeve.
The author's account of life on the Burma Road, with perceptive insight into the people and culture during tumult. Scottish-born Eileen Bigland (1898-1970) is remembered chiefly as a travel writer; however, her biographical treatments of Mary Shelley and Byron are worthy efforts.
Price: $40.00