ROBERT VAN GULIK: A SELECTION

Robert van Gulik (1910-1967) was polymathic to an embarrassing degree. Born in Zutphen, he crammed into his fifty-seven years parallel lives as diplomat, scholar of Chinese and Japanese culture, musician and writer. 
 
It was as a novelist, however, that he achieved most acclaim. His Judge Dee mystery novels, initially prompted by his translation of an eighteenth-century Chinese detective novel but later featuring his own plots, won him devoted readerships in Asia, Europe and America. A quick look at his bibliography, however, reveals the sheer range of his work. From masterly surveys of painting and the Chinese lute to studies of erotic art and the depiction of gibbons, he shows a profound sympathy and understanding for Chinese culture that also informs his detective fiction. Van Gulik's writing is an attempt to introduce two cultures to each other as equals, and he avoids the easy stereotypes found in so much Western writing of the time.
 
We are proud to present a broad selection of Van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries alongside some of his more scholarly and surprising works.  We hope the man himself might have seen it as a combined tribute to himself and his most famous creation. Judge Dee is a mandarin who draws on his culture, on calligraphy, poetry and paintings, to find meaning in the mysteries that present themselves to him. Van Gulik once commented: "Judge Dee, it's me". 
22 items
  • GULIK, Robert Van ( author and illustrator ). The Haunted Monastery: A Chinese Detective Story.
    £300.00
    £300.00
  • GULIK, Robert Van ( author and illustrator ). The Lacquer Screen: A Chinese Detective Story.
    £130.00
    £130.00
  • GULIK, Robert Van ( author and illustrator ). The Lacquer Screen: A Chinese Detective Story.
    £120.00
    £120.00
  • GULIK, Robert Van ( author and illustrator ). The Lacquer Screen: A Chinese Detective Story.
    £300.00
    £300.00
  • GULIK, Robert Van ( author and illustrator ). The Red Pavilion: A Chinese Detective Story.
    £300.00
    £300.00
  • GULIK, Robert van ( author and illustrator ). The Willow Pattern: A Chinese Detective Story.
    £125.00
    £125.00
  • GULIK, Robert van ( author and illustrator ). The Chinese Maze Murders: A Chinese Detective Story Suggested by Three Original Ancient Chinese Plots.
    £1,400.00
    £1,400.00
  • GULIK, Robert van ( author and translator ). Ti-Jen-Chien-Ch’i-an [The Strange Cases of Detective Dee: The Chinese Maze Murders].
    £5,750.00
    £5,750.00
  • GULIK, Robert Van ( author and illustrator ). Poets and Murder: A Chinese Detective Story.
    £130.00
    £130.00
  • GULIK, Robert Van ( author and illustrator ). The Haunted Monastery.
    £650.00
    £650.00
  • GULIK, Robert van. The Chinese Lake Murders: Three Cases Solved by Judge Dee. A Chinese Detective Story Suggested by Original Ancient Chinese Plots
    £650.00
    £650.00
  • GULIK, Robert van. Dee Goong An: Three Murder Cases Solved By Judge Dee an old Chinese detective novel translated from the original Chinese with an introduction and notes.
    £2,500.00
    £2,500.00
  • GULIK, Robert Van.GULIK, Robert Van. Tang-Yin-Pi-Shih: “Parallel Cases from Under the Pear-Tree”: a 13th Century Manual of Jurisprudence and Detection Translated from the Original Chinese with an Introduction and Notes.
    £900.00
    £900.00
  • GULIK, Robert van. Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Dynasty, with an Essay on Chinese Sex Life from the Han to the Ch’ing Dynasty, B.C. 206 – A.D. 1644 [Facsimile of the original 1951 edition].
    £100.00
    £100.00
  • VAN GULIK, Robert. The Lore of the Chinese Lute: An Essay in the Ideology of the Ch’in.
    £45.00
    £45.00
  • WETERING, Janwillem van de. Robert van Gulik, His Life His Work.
    £125.00
    £125.00
  • GULIK, Robert van. Chinese Pictorial Art as Viewed by the Connoisseur Notes on the Means and Methods of Traditional Chinese Connoisseurship of Pictorial Art, Based Upon a Study of the Art of Mounting Scrolls in China and Japan.
    £750.00
    £750.00
  • GULIK, Robert van ( author and illustrator ). The Chinese Bell Murders: Three Cases Solved by Judge Dee.
    £650.00
    £650.00
  • GULIK, Robert van. The Gibbon in China: An Essay in Chinese Animal Lore.
    £220.00
    £220.00
  • GULIK, Robert van; Yukio OGAERI ( translator ). Meiro No Satsujin [The Chinese Maze Murders].
    £2,750.00
    £2,750.00
  • GULIK, Robert van. New Year's Eve in Lan-Fang. A Judge Dee Story.
    £1,500.00
    £1,500.00
  • VAN GULIK, Robert The Willow Pattern: A Chinese Detective Story.
    £175.00
    £175.00