Judge Dee in Kuala Lumpur
GULIK, Robert Van. The Haunted Monastery. A Chinese Detective Story. [Kuala Lumpur:] Art Printing Works. 1961.
[offered with:]
—. The Red Pavilion. A Chinese Detective Story. [Kuala Lumpur:] Art Printing Works. 1961.
Two volumes, 8vo. Publisher’s illustrated wrappers, with maps by Van Gulik to endpapers; Haunted Monastery: pp. [viii], 168, with 9 full-page illustrations; Red Pavilion: pp. [viii], 200, with 6 full-page illustrations; both vols with a few minute chips to spines; Haunted Monastery: spine sunned, a few small scuffs to rear wrapper, slight creasing to spine; Red Pavilion: some spotting to rear wrapper; near fine; bookplate of Peter Apap Bologna (1941–2019), the Irish-Maltese banker and dealer of art and rare books, to front free endpaper versos; half-titles inscribed to ‘Lady Tory | with the author’s best regards | Robert Gulik’, dated Kuala Lumpur, March 1962 (see below).
Two first editions from the Judge Dee mystery series, illustrated by Van Gulik and presented by him in Kuala Lumpur to Hazel Winfield, Lady Tory, wife of Sir Geofroy Tory, the United Kingdom’s first High Commissioner to the newly independent Malaysia.
Although Dutch diplomat and sinologist Robert Van Gulik (1910–1967) was widely respected for his scholarship, it was his detective fiction which brought him the most acclaim. In 1962 he was named Dutch Ambassador to Malaysia, taking up residence in Kuala Lumpur. Shortly afterwards, Sir Geofroy Tory was appointed the United Kingdom’s first High Commissioner to the newly independent Malaysia. These volumes were presented to Tory's second wife (m. 1950) in Kuala Lumpur in March of that year.
Van Gulik evidently preferred writing detective stories to his diplomatic duties: ‘He would listen to brief (the briefer the better; he kept telling his co-workers that no words are wasted in a Chinese poem) reports on the international situation’, and ‘not having much need of sleep, he would spend most of the night in his study’ working on his scholarly treatise and his crime fiction (Van de Wetering, p. 6).
The character of Judge Dee is based on the seventh-century Tang Dynasty magistrate Di Renjie, whom Van Gulik first encountered when translating the eighteenth-century Chinese detective novel Dee Gong An (Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee) into English in 1949. In The Haunted Monastery, Judge Dee seeks shelter from a storm at the Monastery of the Morning Clouds, where three women were murdered the previous year. In The Red Pavilion, Judge Dee becomes entangled in a mystery which forces him to navigate the dark underbelly of Poo-Yang to unravel the truth behind two deaths.
Evers, pp. 55–6. See Van De Wetering, Robert Van Gulik: His Life His Work (1987); on the Torys, see The Telegraph (10 October 2012, online).
SKU: 2125792