Masuda Mankichi. Albumen photograph of Masuda Mankichi with a team of divers. n.p. c1880? Albumen print mounted on card, 6x10cm, with red border, printed on the back. Edges of the print a touch nibbled. sold

The figurative father of Japanese hard hat diving and one of the actual fathers of the Australian pearling industry. Masuda had worked in Yokohama trading houses and been a fireman before turning to salvaging shipwrecks and then to diving for abalone, then to pearl shell. From there he made hard hat diving an industry in Japan.
His meeting with Australian pearler John Miller in Yokohama resulted in a team of Japanese divers led by Masuda's son Sanjiro arriving at Thursday Island in late 1883. It wasn't long before Japanese pearl divers were integral to every romance and thriller of the Arafura Sea, all the south seas.
One striking point in the story is the Japanese foreign ministry's insistence on contracts that protected Japanese from being treated like slaves. They were well aware of Australia's record with imported labour.
On the back the heading is 潜水熟練員 - diving expert - and below, with Masuda's name, is 潜水教師 - diving instructor - surrounded by lists of names, presumably his teams. Judging by the repeated use of one grainy blown up head and shoulders photo of an older Masuda in diving and pearling histories photos of Masuda are thin on the ground.

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Albumen photograph of a young Japanese woman dressed as a man. n.p. c1880? Albumen print mounted on card, 10x6cm, with red border, printed on the back. Edges of the print a touch nibbled. Au$650

Not so long ago I found an ambrotype of two young Japanese women dressed as men; a wondrous and inexplicable thing. This is not in the same league but it is intriguing.
Inscribed on the back is, I'm told, 吉原江戸町 大文字楼 半太夫 - Yoshiwara Edomachi Daimonjiro Handayu. The Daimonji was one of the grandest of pleasure palaces in the Yoshiwara.
I'm not convinced by this inscription. Another photograph from the same source had a similar inscription on the back in a different, possibly earlier, hand: 大文字 ？?太夫 - Diaimonji _ _Tayu. Tayu can mean a high ranking courtesan and certainly the photo is of a completely frocked out woman in a frocked out setting. But our photo is on a different mount; the red edged mount matches the portrait of Masuda Mankichi and a team of his divers, above, also from the same source.
This could be a portrait of a woman dressed to suit the taste of some clients. But that coat, waistcoat and maybe shirt collar seem too large for the properly tailored suit that a high class tayu should have and it is a gentleman's outfit, from hat to watch chain. Or the inscription could be a decision made by the owner of all three photos that this was a courtesan of that brothel. It seems to be a common decision that any woman dressed as a man was a prostitute.
They both look like they were taken in photographers' studios. The undoubted courtesan has some props: an overwhelming robe is on the wall behind her, she has a charcoal brazier and kettle, a dish of snacks and a long pipe. They are both on western looking carpets, not the same one.
*In Chinese 半太夫 can be an unmarried woman or it could be a woman who is not afraid of the enemy.

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Muneaki Mihara. 自在教育法図解 [Jizai Kyoikuho Kuzai]. The Teaching by Pictures the Way of Impraving Freely am Easely the Natural Constitution of Man [sic]. Ritsuma Akiko, 1888 (Meiji 21). Broadside 70x53cm, woodblock printed, folding into publisher's limp cloth covers 17x13cm with printed label. Covers browned with a splodge on the back; a nice copy Au$450

An enchanting and self evident exposition on the value of pictures in learning. Seemingly as simple as a phrenology chart but judging by the amount of text worked into all those different parts of the brain perhaps a lot more complex. From the little, as an illiterate, I can glean on brain function as outlined here this might sit somewhere between phrenology and neurophysics. The open area at the very centre of the brain is labelled 未詳 - unknown.

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De Luxe Building Co., Los Angeles. De Luxe Flats. A book of flats and duplex homes ... Los Angeles 1920. 17x25cm publisher's printed wrapper; 64pp, numerous photo illustrations and plans. Used, the last three or four pages with a crease, pretty good. Au$250

The very soul of old Los Angeles: Moorish palaces alongside quaint olde Englishe cottages alongside southern mansions alongside Spanish mission alongside Swiss alpine alongside colonial alongside English Georgian alongside Italian alongside New England alongside French provincial alongside ...
Images from the De Luxe Building Co's catalogues of Plan-kraft and suchlike home catalogues and this are easy to find thanks to the wizardry of digital reproduction but the actual catalogues are not so easy to find. Worldcat found four locations for this flats catalogue, quite a few more for the various house catalogues that start from about 1912.
From flats Ada Bell Maescher, the ambitious president of the company, soon moved into serious city apartment buildings and even film production. In 1922 the company produced the comedy "Night Life in Hollywood" which, to the disappointment of many of us, showed Los Angeles as the handsome, domestic model city it truly was. You can watch four of the six reels online.

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日本の兵隊さん [Nihon no Heitai-san]. Tokyo, Yonen Kurabu 1933 (Showa 8). 19x26cm publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; 32pp, illustrated throughout in red and blue or black. Some browning blotches, rather good. Au$125

A fun filled manga view, for boys, of life in the military. It's all a romp but sailors have way more excitement and an easier life than soldiers.

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Poisonous woman?

Inoue Masao [aka Kasaen]. 毒婦辨天お紫 [Dokufu Benten Omurasaki]. Osaka, Sekizenkan 1893 (Meiji 26). 22x15cm colour (woodblock?) illustrated publisher's wrapping; double page colour woodblock frontispiece by Sensei Toshinobu (must be Taguchi - Toshinobu II - since Yamaguchi Toshinobu died in 1886), three double page illustrations by Maeono Kazuhiro. Signs of use, spine apparently repaired and stitched recently, some browning adjacent to the illustrations. At first I thought the frontispiece had been printed on very thin silk and mounted but I see the background has been printed using a fine grain cloth (pasted on the block?). There is a fine array of embossing and overprinted glazes all over the print. sold

This elegant dokufu (poisonous woman) novel, as far as I can figure out, doesn't exist. So what? There is an ocean of lost books. But books that have vanished without mention are usually by authors who have also vanished. Inoue may not be a household name but he was reasonably well known, published several books, and was well connected in literary circles. A quick search will uncover a small hill of his books and a large hill of modern academic papers; ie he is perfect academic fodder: obscure enough but not too difficult to research. Sekizenkan were, likewise, hardly ephemeral publishers. Even when physical copies are gone the book's existence must have been well known enough. So why can't I find even a passing mention of this book?
The sacred serenity of the cover, and even the title page, might also be baffling until we see the tattoo on the back of the enticing woman in the frontispiece. Benten - Benten Kozo Kikunosuke - was a cross dressing tattooed kabuki thief who did well until a wardrobe malfunction uncovered his tattoo. He was the star of quite a few kabuki thrillers. Now I can't figure out, being illiterate, whether our dokufu Benten is a woman or man. The florid poetic preface talks about her beauty but it is florid and poetic and mostly unintelligible to me. And that's the hint of an impressive swell of breast in the frontispiece, what anime watchers know as 'fan service'. There's clearly plenty of action and violence, we can see from the other illustrations, but who is Benten? Do those slender arms in the frontispiece belong to same person as the brawny arms of the masked gunman in the last picture?

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FOOTE, T. [Thomas] Vicars. My Weird Wooing. A true story of Australian life. London, Trischler [1889?]. Octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper. Signs of use but pretty damn good for a book whose cover demands immediate thumbing. on hold

"Twenty-fifth thousand" and undoubtedly the first printing. The Hansom Cab Publishing Company which became Trischler in 1889 used their print run numbers - real or imagined - to suggest that such thousands had already read and loved the book. The advertisement for The Mystery of a Hansom Cab at the end tells us that it had sold 348,000 copies in 14 months. Madame Midas had been on sale for seven months. I think all the titles advertised at the end had appeared under the Hansom Cab imprint so the change to Trischler was recent.
But this not the first edition. That was published by Centennial in Melbourne in 1888 as by David Fowler, following serialisation in the Emerald Hill Record. You might choose to wait for a copy of the Melbourne edition but I doubt I'll be alive to provide it. Either and both editions are rare.
A tightly packed Melbourne thriller; it's hard to skim. Jump a dozen pages and we find someone has been disgraced, died gruesomely, or, as hinted by the cover, is proceeding to murder his wife with a hammer. Another page or two and our narrator is fighting for his life in a deserted quarry. There's a crusty millionaire with a beautiful daughter, a plucky young police inspector who abruptly ascends to an earldom near the end, bushrangers somewhere in the background, gambling cheats ...  
Melbourne is the grim city of horror; Sydney is where comfort and peace is found in a cottage by the harbour.

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Euthanasia Or Turf, Tent and Tomb. London, Routledge 1893. Octavo publisher's illustrated glazed boards (rubbed with wear to edges and hinges). Certainly read but a very decent, even proper, copy. Au$250

First edition, yellowback issue. It was also issued in cloth at a higher price. A title for every reader; the cover of this romantic thriller might convince us that is a book for the horsey set but what is that monk doing on the field? Newcastle University attributes this to E.W. Hornung. What did their librarian know that no-one else does?
What shines through here is that the aristocracy must be judged by different standards to the rest of us. The hero, the poor younger brother Lord George, is seen as the "soul of honour and loyalty and truth" by all around him while he behaves appallingly by lower class standards. The Euthanasia of the title is indirect, by way of expiation, but I guess it is there. The rest of the title takes place in England, Hungary and Naples. Despite its inclusion in Hubin there is no murder here except of ethics.

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RAWLINSON, R. Designs for Factory Furnace and Other Tall Chimney Shafts. London, [Weale 1858]. 56x36cm disbound; 8,[1]pp and 25 plates including the illustrated title, all but three tinted lithographs, a half page tinted litho in the text. All loose; a mildy abused but complete copy that deserves a reasonable binding or portfolio. sold

One of the most captivating of 19th century architectural books and just about the only great book on this particular aspect of modern industrial building. Rawlinson introduces aesthetics into what had been so utilitarian and graceless. He uses as models the towers of the east, medieval and renaissance Italy, even the castellated battlement. He insists on the beauty of the vertical line and the use of colour - with polychromatic brickwork, terra-cotta cornices and cast-iron roofs. These enormous industrial constructions fit, however, without trauma into the bucolic peace of the English countryside. They become, in his views, picturesque monuments, a meeting place for Trollopian neighbours out for a stroll. They emit no smoke and no sound, clearly do not disturb the local game sought by a hunter and his hound striding by and leave lounging peasantry unruffled.
I suspect Rawlinson of being clever about this. He is trying to persuade the gentle classes to take seriously buildings which until then had been left to black-thumbed engineers working in never seen industrial slums. Rawlinson was an engineer of course, though hardly black-thumbed by 1858. He had, and would continue to devote much of his career to sanitary reform in just such places as industrial slums. It is curious to find a reformist engineer so bent on aesthetics, even antagonistic to what we might expect to be favoured materials ("Cement - terrible cement - has been a great drawback to modern architecture.") and it is not until almost the end of his life that we see another outbreak of artistic sentiment: a slender book of verse published in 1893. Still, he gets practical, telling us that modern industrial towers were not only ugly but unsafe, and advocates the newest technology for proper foundations and construction.

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FORBES, David W. Hawaiian National Bibliography 1780 - 1900. Sydney, Hordern & University of Hawaii 1999-2003. Four volumes quarto publisher's cloth. As new in original packing boxes. Au$200

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DUNN, Bob. Angling In Australia : its history and writings. Sydney, Ell 1991. Quarto publisher's cloth and dustwrapper; profusely illustrated. As new in its original packing box. Signed by the author on the half title. Au$75

The essential bibliography.

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HEARN, Lafcadio. 17 titles in 18 volumes published by Hearn in his lifetime: Exotics and Retrospectives; Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan; Shadowings; Kotto; A Japanese Miscellany; Kokoro; Gleanings in Buddha Fields; Kwaidan; In Ghostly Japan; Youma; Two Years in the French West Indies; Some Chinese Ghosts; Out of the East; Japan, an Interpretation; Gombo Zhebes; Stray Leaves; Chita. Tokyo 1981-82 - see note. Varied octavos, publishers decorated cloth. Pretty much as new. A reprint of the Perkins' bibliography of these titles accompanies the set. Au$1000

When I bought this group of gleaming first editions on the strength of some photos I feared that the photographer had been too kind and the flaws would only be seen after I opened the box. But no. The books are better than the photos. That's because this is a set of facsimiles published by Yushodo in an edition of 300 copies in 1981 and 82. Never heard of it until now.
It is a publishing triumph, I guess. And no doubt it was ferociously expensive. Still, here it is at a lot less than it cost me.

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Tokiwa Toyoko. 危険な毒花 [Kiken na Dokubana (sometimes transliterated as Kiken na Adabana)]. Tokyo, Mikasa Shobo 1957. 19x13cm publisher's boards and dustwrapper with wrap around (obi) and original cellophane; photo illustrations throughout. An outstanding copy with only a hint of the usual browning. Au$1100

First edition of this photographic study of women at the sharp edge of Americanised Japan: Yokohama. It is captivating - from front cover to back - without being in the slightest bit charming. Tokiwa is unequivocal from the start. The front cover declares what this book is: a Japanese woman photographing Japanese women being degraded.
Tokiwa had good reason to be unimpressed with Americans - her father was killed in the fire bombing of Tokyo - but the soldiers and sailors who appear here are no more despicable than the Japanese men swarming around nude photographic sessions in part three and in that last photo - also the first, on the front cover - the woman is being dragged by a man, any man. Degradation is a system. The title of this can be translated as 'dangerous poisonous flower' - a prostitute - but it's the women here who have been poisoned.

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Perry and the black ships. Portrait of Captain Henry A. Adams. n.p. [1854]. Ink, wash and yellow on paper, 38x28cm. A few worm holes expertly repaired. sold

A fine large portrait of Captain Adams, Perry's deputy in the gunboat diplomacy that opened Japan in 1854. These first pictures of the Americans in Japan were copied from each other, to and from kawaraban (the illicit news sheets), and round again. There's little point in trying to track their progress; rather judge each on its charms. This one's by someone pretty good.
Less demonic than some portraits but possibly more dangerously psychotic, this is labelled a true portrait on the 2nd month, 18th day - which, allowing for the difference between the old Japanese calendar and the modern, must be soon after the squadron's arrival in Edo (Tokyo) Bay on February 13. Possibly February 21 when Adams landed at Uraga.
The notes on his uniform explain that the tasselled epaulette is gold and his uniform has gold thread.

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Uryu Masakazu & Hashimoto Sadahide 西洋新書 [Seiyo Shinsho]. Tokyo, Yamatoyo Kihei (Eto Kihei for volumes six & seven) 1872 - 75 (Meiji 5 to 8). 23x15cm, 7 volumes in 14 parts publisher's wrappers with printed labels (recently restitched); seven double page colour maps, a folding plan, a folding plate, two double page and some 174 other illustrations (most half page) by Sadahide. Some surface nibbling of part covers toward the outside of the bundle; a rather good set. Au$3500

A complete set, which is rare, of this expansive gathering of news from the west. The title is well represented in libraries but I could not find a complete set anywhere outside Japan. Few libraries get close. Even the electronic version held by many seems to be incomplete.
I can't work out the organisation of this but, roughly, the first half of the work is devoted to the United States and Mexico before moving on to Europe. A lot is military with much on the civil war, pretty up to date and natural enough for a country just emerged from their own civil war and having to face and deal with the threat of the west. The plan of Paris is dated 1867 which together with the folding plate of Paris vignettes is from material presumably collected at the Exposition.
Sadahide is not so well served by his block cutters as he was with his masterpiece books like the views of Yokohama life and Meriken Shinshi but there is plenty of charm and characteristic sharp-eyed fluid precision. He was, after all, getting on and was dead before the sixth and seventh volumes appeared so he may not have had much to say about it.

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London - Melbourne Air Race. Nederlands Succes. Melbourne Race. n.p. [1934?]. Colour lithograph on card 47x31cm, with a mounted colour illustration. Edges a bit knocked with a short tear in one corner; hanging strip or card stand on the back pretty much gone. Au$450

A shop placard for a new brand of cigars that celebrates the Dutch success in the Melbourne Centenary or MacRobertson Air Race. The Dutch KLM plane Uiver arrived second and won on handicap. The onlaid colour illustration is, I suppose, the cigar box label. I found a couple of adverts in newspapers dating into 1936 for Melbourne Race cigars but nothing else.

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Kimono textile advertisement. Large painted advertisement on linen for a kimono textile merchant. n.p. [earlyish 20th century?]. 137x72cm painting on linen. Au$500

This extravagant promotional piece shows three exquisitely dressed and coiffed ladies considering a bolt of fabric. The woman with her back to us is undoubtedly the crucial judge.
I hope my photos convey some of the extraordinary detail: from the hair to the gold embroidery to the red thread that holds the bolt together. What I can't capture properly is the textures that have been mysteriously imbued into what is a heavy linen. That purple kimono feels like velvet, while next to it the horizontal ribbing is accentuated. If a ground has been applied it's microscopically thin. Has some additive to the colour softened and smoothed the fabric?
The upper seal in the bottom left corner includes 'Yamada' but I'm lost after that. I think the lower seal can translate as 'mountain spirit'. Artist's name or establishment? I don't know. Any actual knowledge gratefully accepted.

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Takarazuka. A collection of 112 bromide photo postcards of Takarazuka actors n.p. c1920 to 30. These were obviously in an album with corners which have somehow interacted with the photo surface and caused bleaching and marks to corners and edges. There are three or four plain photos, the rest are postcards. Four have writing on the back and three are stamped. These are dated 1920. Au$500

The Takarazuka, the all women theatre company, was founded in 1913, presented their first show in 1914, introduced the revue to Japan in 1927, and is now, as much of the world knows, huge. There is a mountain of stuff out there but there is a paucity of images and information from their first years. A collection like this - the number of postcard photos - makes it evident that there was a well established fandom and a fair industry in satisfying them by the twenties, but not so much seems to have survived.
Sketchy and gap-toothed lists of actors are extant but most have no accompanying portraits; similarly sketchy lists of productions survive but even fewer are accompanied by photographs. I went through 15 years of actors grouped by their first year assiduously collected on Takawiki expecting to find several examples of the same cards; I found one. 
In later years actors became specialists, the otokoyaku play men, the musumeyaku play women, but our actors played men and women, Japanese and westerner, traditional and modern, gangster and empress. Nara Miyako, Kadota Ashiko and Ashihara Kuniko are identified; the rest are up to you. All are in costume and most are in action on stage.

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An English woman's paradise

[CUFFE, William Ulick O'Connor]. The Earl of Desart. The Raid of the "Detrimental". Being the true history of the great disappearance of 1862; related by several of those implicated ... London, Pearson 1897. Octavo publisher's decorated cloth blocked in gilt and white. A hint of browning; quite good.  Au$300

Only edition of this lively high society/South Seas/feminist/lost race fantasia which sees a clutch of England's finest damsels kidnapped by well bred wastrels and yachted away to a South Sea island. Soon they come across the less necessary half of a race, seemingly of Mediterranean origin, whose women leave all men between childhood and dotage on another island and visit once a year. Our aristocratic bandits discover that being British and useless is useless when young women can have their choice of good looking capable men. It's only short step to a polygamous queendom.
This seems to result in a mulitude of children. I suspect that Desart didn't think through the mechanics of woman run polygamy but perhaps I misjudge him. Without the usual British infant mortality rate there might not be an impossible number of kids.   
This was, I think, Desart's last novel. I couldn't find much in the way of reviews but I am pleased to report that the Launceston Examiner thought it "a medley of puerilities." With a tough editor Desart might be still read today. He could write fluently and entertainingly but he did get side tracked easily, sometimes forgetting what novel he was writing. His Lord and Lady Piccadilly was racing into the last bend before the home straight when he abruptly introduced a horde of new characters and turned a tragedy into a social satire for a couple of hundred pages. And he is prone to letting his cynical authorial asides overwhelm a page.

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Iehara Masanori & Shiozu Kanichiro. 学校必用 : 色図問答 [Gakko Hitsuyo : Irozu Mondo]. Kyoto, Wakabayashi Kisuke 1876 (Meiji 9). 21x15cm publisher's wrapper with title label; [2],40,[2]pp on 22 double folded leaves, two colour charts and small colour squares through the text, hand coloured. Owner's inscription on the wrappers and title page; stitching partly broken, used but pretty good for an old school book. sold

Western colour theory introduced to Japanese students. This was, according to one historian and repeated by others, first published in 1873 but I can't find any copy earlier than 1876. I have read that it is a copy of an American book by Marcius Willson but I think there is some confusion. Willson produced wall charts for American schools that were used in Japan and maybe in 1873 wall chart no. XIV was used. It was included in a version of the Shogaku Nyumon seies of elementary introductions in 1875, without the explanation we have here. His accompanying writings on color in his 'Manual of Information and Suggestions for Object Lessons' - the work cited - are nothing like this. In any case he seems to have borrowed Field's chromatics. So it was English colour theory that made its way into Japan first. I'd make a pretty confident bet that this is the first edition.

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DYE, Daniel Sheets. A Grammar of Chinese Lattice. Harvard Univ Press 1937. Two volumes quarto, excellent in publisher's cloth and barely nicked dustwrappers; illustrated with some 2500 patterns. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series V. A pleasing pair. Au$750

First and best edition. A practical copybook and one of the great efforts of collection if not classification; the first on Chinese lattice the author thinks since 1631. The result of twenty years collecting, Dye called an end to his work with the death of his draughtsman Mr Yang Chi-shang in January 1936. He does comment that though there must be more examples he hasn't found, some three hundred patterns collected since 1933 but not included in this book contain no basic variants.

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Noshigami. のし紙 A sample book of Noshigami - special paper for gifts - from the Kadoya Dyeing Workshop, Tokyo. Tokyo [1920s?]. 24x18cm, home made printed stiff wrappers; 105 leaves of colour printed samples on different kinds of paper, various sizes. Au$400

Noshi-gami is specially printed paper to be folded and attached to gifts as I understand it. The ineluctable beauty of some patterns is enhanced here, I say,  by being in a quite smart cover decorated with locomotives.

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FYNE, Neal. The Land of the Living Dead A narration of the perilous sojourn therein of George Cowper, mariner, in the year 1835. London, Drane [1897]. Octavo publisher's illustrated pale green cloth blocked in black (spine a bit browned); eight plates by E.A. Holloway. A rather good copy of a book that, like many of us, resents handling and aging. Inscribed and signed by Fyne. Au$1250

First edition; a South Seas lost race thriller and hardly utopian. A ruthless godlike figure holds the power of life and death over his subjects, exploiting a decent bit of scientific investigation by someone at sometime in a sinister and lethal Wizard of Oz (or perhaps certain churches?) bit of imposture.
A couple of experts have conjectured that Neal Fyne is a pseudonym since no other books appear under that name. But a pamphlet, I suspect poem, 'In the Middle Watch' by Neal Fyne appeared in 1891 and Drane advertised, in 1897, that ''The Fulfilment of the Prophecy and Other Stories by Neal Fyne, Author of "The Coffin Shop," "Land of the Living Dead," etc. etc.'' was in the press. This is not necessarily a lie; the press could well be the cupboard in the corner where dubious manuscripts were kept. Neither does it prove the pseudonym notion either way. The inscription here doesn't help: it shows only that Fyne was not giving anything away if that wasn't his name.
By the way, if you type the phrase "land of the living dead" into Trove's newspaper search you will find a 1945 letter describing Sydney suburb Artarmon as the land of the living dead.

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MILL, James. Elements of Political Economy. Second edition, revised and corrected. London, for Baldwin &c 1824. Octavo, untrimmed in original boards (spine quite chipped, remnants of printed label). A hint of browning, rather good. Neat contemporary inscription on front fly: Ditchling Library 679; and neat 1892 inscription of a Robert Turner on the title. Au$500

Heaps of changes and improvements writes Mill: "greater developement [sic] ... clearer proof ... more palpable ... rewritten ... more fully expounded ... cleared of some ambiguity ... a new section ...". It would hardly be surprising, then, that readers would dump their slipshod first edition in the bin the moment they unwrapped this.

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BROWN, Charles Philip. A Dictionary, English and Telugu Explaining the English Idioms and Phrases in Telugu. Madras, printed at the Christian Knowledge Society's Press 1852. The half title is dated 1853. Thick octavo mid 20th century plain half calf; [4],8,xxx,1392pp. Binding separated from the text block. A variety of comparatively small flaws: two torn pages repaired without loss, another small repair elsewhere, a touch of bug nibbling of the first and last leaves; in all rather good.
The binding is not so handsome but it is fitting: a note on the front fly tells us the book was given to the LMS, Gooty in 1940 and rebound by the Gooty High School Press. Gooty is not far from Brown's longtime home in Cuddapah (Kadapa). In 1972 the book is given to St Andrews Hall Library or any Telugu speaking missionary, so it was likely in the neighbourhood for well over a century. Au$1250

The first English-Telugu dictionary. Its companion Telugu-English dictionary also appeared in 1852. A second edition appeared in 1903 and is still in print.
"Telugu literature was dying out, the flame was guttering in the socket," Brown wrote in his autobiography, so with proper unbalanced zealotry he maintained a private army of scribes and scholars with his meagre civil servant salary, collecting and transcribing manuscripts, putting in, he said, five hours each morning before he went off to work.
In case you are also baffled: the portrait of Brown on Wikipedia is not a picture of any human born in 1798. Maybe someone else can get them to correct it, I couldn't.

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