Books

First edition, first printing, in the scarce and most collectible state with the uncorrected text error, erratum slip, and superfluous brushstroke on the calligraphic endorsement leaf. While first editions were issued in several states, "it is believed that copies with the text error... represent the earliest printed version" (Schiller, p. 37). The first edition of Quotations From Chairman Mao, compiled for internal use within the People's Liberation Army two years before the 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, 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. All first editions including the present copy contain the well-known error of an extra brush stroke in one of the characters in Lin Biao's calligraphy. Additionally, some copies in red vinyl see two characters similar in appearance transposed between pages 82 and 83, and a subset of these were issued with an erratum slip highlighting the mistake. By late 1966, red vinyl had become the sole acceptable way of packaging the Quotations in Chinese and other languages. When held aloft by participants at political rallies, the binding created a striking sea of red, a metaphor for society's saturation in the language and ideology of Maoism. Duodecimo. Original red vinyl, title and five-pointed star to front cover in blind. With erratum slip in rear pocket addressing a typesetting error on pp. 82-3. Housed in a red quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Tissue-guarded sepia portrait frontispiece of Mao, sepia facsimile of Lin Biao's calligraphy, epigraph leaf and title page printed in colour. Vinyl bright, couple of small red marks on edges, blank first and last leaves foxed with couple of old stains, text clean with just occasional spotting. A near-fine copy. Justin Schiller, Quotations of Chairman Mao 1964-2014; A Short Bibliographical Study, 2014; Yan Jiaqi & Gao Gao, Turbulent Decade: A History of the Cultural Revolution, 1996.