Shamus A'Rabbit Signed 1st Edition 1937 Ballads of the East Sapajou Hardcover

Up For Sale Today is

Ballads of the East

by

Shamus A'Rabbit
Illustrated by SAPAJOU

Hardcover. 8vo. A.R. Hager, Shanghai, China. 1937. 52 pgs., 44 illustrations by Sapajou. Signed and inscribed by Shamus A'Rabbit to the reverse of the FFEP.  First Edition/First Printing.

Bound in red cloth with decorated paper covered cloth boards. Boards have shelf-wear present to the extremities (rear board scuffed and worn). Foxing present. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid.

A very nice collection of humoristic poems related to Shanghai and Hong Kong life. Most of poems are illustrated by the famous cartoonist Sapajou (Georgii Avksentievich Sapojnikoff), a former Russian Army Lieutenant who worked as a Cartoonist for The North China Daily News from 1925 onwards.

Georgii Avksentievich Sapojnikoff (Sapajou) arrived as a refugee in Shanghai in 1920. He joined the China Daily News five years later, and collaborated for almost fifteen years with his cartoons. He published several albums of sketches of Shanghai life and illustrated many contemporary books about China. (From Richard Rigby). "An engineer and a chemist, Mr A'Rabbitt has lived in China and Japan for over three decades (.) At intervals through the years have bits of his verse appeared in print, formerly in the Hongkong newspapers and occasionally in other publication, under the name of John Kyoto".