The Questions of Lifu: A Story of China

New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1942. Hardcover. Near Fine/Very Good. Red cloth boards stamped in black. Illustrated endpapers. A few pages show minor soiling, else interior is clean and unmarked. One page has a short closed tear on its bottom edge. Dust jacket shows some general edge wear with small chips and a few closed tears; not price clipped ($2.00). DJ in archival sleeve. pp. v, 104, [2]. 8.75 x 6.25 inches. Scarce in dust jacket. Appears to be an early printing. Copyright page date is 1942 and gives the code [b - 4- 43]. There is an ''A'' at the foot of each of the dust jacket's flaps. Though not stated explicitly, this story is set in the China of the early 1940s and the period of the Second Sino-Japanese War. This is the story of Lifu, an inquisitive little boy who wants to know when his father, a soldier, is coming home. He sets out on a adventure, marching across the mountains looking for his father, which includes meeting and teaming up with a girl whose village had been burned. Eleanor Frances Lattimore (1904-1986) was born in Shanghai and spent her first sixteen years in China. Her family returned to the United States in 1920 where her father was a professor of Chinese Studies at Dartmouth.