HOLM, Frits. My Nestorian Adventure In China. New York, Fleming H. Revell Company 1923.
8vo. Original orange cloth with blue-green and red lettering, map endpapers, illustrated dust-wrappers; pp. 335, illustrated throughout; wrappers a little rubbed and with minor marginal flaws, otherwise very good.
First edition, rare in itself and with the wrappers. An entertaining description of an expedition which centres on the efforts of the author to find, examine and acquire the famous Nestorian Monument at Sian-fu. 'A commemorative medal in the Hunterian, University of Glasgow, marks Danish journalist and adventurer, Frits Holm’s (1881–1930) attempt to remove in 1908 a monument recording the first arrival of Nestorian Christianity in China (AD.635). Unsuccessful in his attempt at its removal, Holm commissioned a replica of the stele in local stone, carved directly from the original and shipped it to New York, where, for ten years, it was displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even at the time it was questioned whether a copy had any artistic merit, but such was the Nestorian stele’s fame as a Christian document that it ended up in the Vatican Museum and was itself a source from which cast copies were made and distributed around the world' (University of Glasgow, online).
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