1930 · Shanghai
by Yang, Xiong, and Dai Zhen
Shanghai: Zhonghua Book Company, 1930. Stab stitched book, 13 juan plus appendix; text in Chinese; printed paper wrappers; owner's seal on title page and a couple internal pages, corner bumped, near fine. The Fangyan, compiled by Yang Xiong in the Han Dynasty around the first century BCE, was "the first dialect dictionary in the history of Chinese lexicography and is thought to be the first of its kind in the history of world lexicography." (Yong and Peng, Chinese lexicography). The Quing scholar Dai Zhen revisited the text, and in 1776 was able to, with the use of the great manuscript encyclopedia the Yongle Dadian, produce an edition that corrected (truncated)