Books and Manuscripts

Quotations of Chairman Mao Tse-tung ("Little Red Book")
(Beijing): Printed and edited by the Central Intelligence Bureau of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, (July 1964). First edition (with Lin Biao's calligraphic endorsement printed in brown in the uncorrected state, and with text corrected at bottom of pp. 82-83). 16mo, 5 1/2 x 4 in. (140 x 102 mm). (vii), 2, 2, 250 pp. Title-page printed in red and in green. Illustrated with a lithographic frontispiece portrait of Mao. Original flexible red vinyl wrappers (Schiller's binding B), stamped in blind; inscription on front free-endpaper, "For Dear Battle Companion Comrade Zi Chun: Hope you will read this book carefully, read it over and over again. Examine yourself all the time, Enhance your ideological level, improve your work, be a promoter of the revolution forever. Battle Companion We Xi Sheng May 15, 1965"; signed "Cui Jing Long" at bottom left of front free endpaper; small vintage photograph of Mao inserted at back; soiling to interior wrappers. Schiller, Quotations of Chairman Mao, A Short Bibliographical Study 

Rare first edition of Mao's "Little Red Book", the influential pocket-size compendium of quotations and excerpts from speeches given by Mao on class struggle, communism, and other topics. This copy with Lin Bao's uncorrected calligraphic facsimile endorsement, where a superfluous brushstroke occurred in the second vertical line from the right, second character from the top, which was corrected when the book was later printed. Following the "Lin Bao Incident" in 1971, when Bao died in a plane crash after he was accused of plotting to assassinate Mao as part of a political coup, people were encouraged to tear out Bao's endorsement leaf, and future copies were published without it. Only few surviving copies of this 1964 first edition have this leaf intact. This red vinyl binding is preceded only by the very rare issue in printed wrappers.

A fine copy.