The Silent Traveller in San Francisco

Title: The Silent Traveller in San Francisco

Author: Yee, Chiang

Publication: New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1964.

Description: Inscribed copy of this travelogue on San Francisco by Chinese American writer and artist Chiang Yee. First edition. With over 50 black-and-white in-text illustrations by Yee, plus 16 pages of full-page color plates. Bound in full tan cloth stamped with blue lettering. In original pictorial dust jacket with price. 9.5 x 6.5 inches; 366, [2] pages. Inscribed to Mary Elizabeth and Davidson Taylor with the author's signature in Chinese. Binding with slight lean to the spine and moderate edgewear; text with scattered foxing throughout; dust jacket with significant foxing, tape repair, and a clipped corner. Very Good in a Good only dust jacket. Chiang Yee was one of the first 20th-century Chinese writers to publish books in English. He was known for The Silent Traveller series, which detailed his visits to various locations in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, the United States, and Japan. He was born in China in 1903, moved to England in 1933, and then relocated to the United States in 1955, becoming a professor of Chinese at Columbia University. He was the subject of a 2010 biography by Da Zheng and a 2012 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Davidson Taylor, to whom this copy is inscribed, was director of Columbia University's arts programs.