Samuel Victor Constant was born in 1894, a son of a lawyer who once was a student of Oriental languages at the Columbia University and then a member of the Oriental Society. Today we can only find that he was a U. S. Army Captain, came to Beijing in 1923 as an Assistant Military Attaché of the American Legation. In 1924, he went to the front line of the Zhi-Feng War as an observer. The year later, he joined as a representative of the Legation the rescue effort of Harvey James Howard, an American doctor of Union Hospital kidnapped by bandits in Northeast China for about ten weeks. While working for the American Legation, he also attended College of Chinese Studies (Know as California College in China in the U.S.). He received his Master Degree in 1936 with a thesis titled Calls, sounds and merchandise of the Peking street peddler. The typewritten copy of this thesis is 103 pages long, with color illustrations and photos, 20 by 27 cm in size, currently hold by Occidental College Library, California.
In the same year, a revised and typeset edition was published by Camel Bell in Beijing. The University of California at Berkeley owns one copy of this edition. It is under the same title but 187 pages long, has photos, black/white and color illustrations. Constant signed his name in Chinese as Kang Shidan, and thanked in the Preface his teacher and friend Chin Yue-p’o, the College Dean William B. Pettus, for their guide and help on producing this work.
A new edition of this book were printed, only two hundred copies, by Bird & Bull Press, one of the premier private presses in America, in August 1993. This is a beautifully produced book: quarter-bound in red morocco with blue oriental cloth sides and black leather spine label, 156 pages, printed in black and reddish-brown, red embroidery pattern of the Dragons and Pearl on the title page. Artist Rosemary Covey created 25 woodcuts specifically for this book. The owner of the Press Henry Morris printed the woodcuts directly from the wood and tipped them in throughout the text. The original illustration became reduced-size line drawings and in black and white only, though. According the Prefatory Note by Henry Morris, books and papers on peddlers and peddling in English are no more than forty in the world, and this is the only one on Chinese peddlers and peddling. That is why he decided to reproduce this title with great effort.
During his staying in China, Constant published two other books. One is a 122 pages long Chinese military terms: English-Chinese, Chinese-English by China Booksellers Ltd, Beijing, 1927; another is Trade and shop signs by Peiyang Press, Beijing, (1930-1940?). The later contains only 18 leaves, chiefly illustrations, 24 x 32 cm in size
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发表于 2011-11-22 01:12
发表于 2011-11-22 08:40
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