Books

First edition, first printing, of Mao's "Little Red Book", in the corrected text state, with Lin Biao's endorsement leaf removed as part of the nationwide purge of his political influence. While precursor issues and first editions were issued in a variety of bindings, this variant represents the earliest known use of the red vinyl design that later became an internationally recognizable symbol of Maoist fervor. The first edition of Quotations From Chairman Mao, compiled for use within the People's Liberation Army two years before the work became synonymous with Mao's Cultural Revolution, was issued either in red vinyl plastic as with the present copy or in paper wrappers, with all first editions containing 250 numbered pages of text. According to the editor in charge of finalizing the text, those in paper wrappers were issued first for the individual use of high-ranking officers, while those in vinyl, which took longer to produce, were intended for brigades of up to eight men. As Schiller notes, first editions in vinyl may or may not contain a typesetting error found on pp. 82-83; this copy is an example of the corrected text. The Quotations was originally printed at the behest of Lin Biao, Mao's second in command, to elevate Mao's profile within the army, with first editions containing an endorsement in Lin's calligraphy and a preface crediting Lin with promoting the study of Maoist ideas. Like many copies, the present example was caught up in the widespread censorship precipitated by Lin's desperate flight and death in 1971. On September 13 of that year, a plane carrying Lin, along with most of his immediate family, crashed in the Mongolian desert on route to the Soviet Union. The precise cause of Lin's flight is still unknown, with theories continuing to circulate regarding a possible failed plot by Lin to assassinate Mao or, indeed, vice versa, but there is clear evidence of a profound souring of relations between the Chairman and his number two in the preceding months. After Mao and other party leaders had recovered from the drama and shock of the whole affair - Mao had had to decide whether to have Lin shot down while he was still in Chinese airspace - they quickly issued instructions for all traces of Lin and his support for Mao to be destroyed. For the owner of this copy, removing all the Lin-related material guaranteed their political safety. Historians have gathered ample anecdotal evidence that Lin's transformation in party propaganda from hero to traitor precipitated widespread grassroots disillusionment with Mao and the Cultural Revolution. Suddenly, ordinary people were required to believe that Lin had always been working against the interests of the revolution, with propagandists claiming that he had promoted distribution of the "Little Red Book" to aggrandize Mao against the latter's wishes. Anti-Lin diatribes in state media never addressed the question that hung over the Cultural Revolution and the Quotations until Mao's death in 1976: if Lin had always been a nefarious political element, why had the all-knowing Mao chosen him as his designated successor? READ MORE Duodecimo. Original red vinyl, title and five-pointed star to front cover in blind. Housed in a red quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Tissue-guarded brown frontispiece portrait of Mao, epigraph leaf and title page printed in color. With the calligraphic endorsement leaf and 2-page preface excised in the early 1970s by a previous owner. Vinyl bright, frontispiece presenting well, slight marginal finger soiling to title page, edges and rear free endpaper lightly foxed, text clean and still sharp. A near-fine copy. Justin Schiller, Quotations of Chairman Mao 1964-2014; A Short Bibliographical Study, 2014.