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	Morrison's Manuscript Catalogue	PAGES Table of Contents History of Collection Description of Collection RM Numbers Williams Report UCL Shelfmark Index Catalogue Addenda Lost and Found Subject Index Title Index Name Index Preface Index Imprint Index

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Notes

This page provides an edited transcription of Robert Morrison's manuscript catalogue of his Chinese Library (SOAS MS 80823).

The catalogue is in the form of a small book (about 16 x 13 cm.) of nearly 400 pages, with each page containing title entries for one of 396 phonetic keywords, following the system used in Morrison's Dictionary of the Chinese Language (1815-1823). There are a total of 1,114 title entries, which, accounting for duplicate entries, represent some 900 distinct titles.

The catalogue was compiled by Morrison prior to his return to England in 1824, as is evidenced by the following colophon, written by Morrison aboard the H.C.S. Waterloo :

Total about 803. Carry to England with me altogether about 10,000 volumes. Waterloo Feb.20, 1824. S.Lat.7 W.L.14.

For each entry in the catalogue Morrison gives the title in Chinese characters, and usually a description of its physical extent and/or comments on its subject matter. The catalogue entries are in the form of short, disjointed notes, with copious abbreviations. In order to make these more readily understandable, punctuation has been added, capitalisation regularised and abbreviations expanded as and where necessary. Illegible text is represented as [...].

In front of the title for most catalogue entries there has been added a sequential catalogue number between 1 and 916. These catalogue numbers correspond to the catalogue numbers written on the covers of most of the actual books in the collection by John Williams in 1854. However, as discussed elsewhere, the numbers written in Morrison's Manuscript Catalogue are in a hand that is clearly neither that of Morrison nor that of Williams, but were probably added to the catalogue sometime after the collection arrived in England. Nevertheless, there is evidence that these numbers derive from a now lost draft of a catalogue of the collection that Morrison was preparing for publication during 1824-1825 (see Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison vol.2 pp.295-296), and so the numbers are recorded in the table below. See the Index of Catalogue Numbers for a listing of Morrison's books in number sequence, together with SOAS callmark identifications where known.

For the reader's convenience the catalogue is presented below in tabular form, each table representing the entries for one keyword, divided into columns showing the Chinese title, catalogue number, physical extent, and Morrison's comments for each entry.

The Chinese titles are as written in the catalogue, and no attempt has been made to amend or indicate incorrect Chinese characters, even though these are not uncommon (e.g. the book Bao shi quanshu 寶氏全書 is also erroneously recorded as Dou shi quanshu 竇氏全書).

Keywords with no entries are ommited.

Keyword Index

Facsimile of Entries for Keywords Sze and Ta