Mao Zedong ("Chairman Mao"). [Quotations from Chairman Mao, in Chinese]. N.p., n.d. [1964].. First edition. S...

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First Edition of the Little Red Book

Mao Zedong ("Chairman Mao"). [Quotations from Chairman Mao, in Chinese]. N.p., n.d. [1964].

First edition. Sixteenmo. 2 (Preface), 2 (Table of Contents), 250 pages. Frontispiece portrait of Mao. Half-title in red; title page in red and green. This copy also has the first state of the one-page endorsement by Lin Biao, leader of the People's Liberation Army, which was subsequently removed. Thirty chapters.

Original white printed wrappers with red star and text to spine, and red rectangular title field with black text to front wrapper. Moderate soiling to the wrappers. A previous owner has changed the title of Chapter 22 in the table of contents and on the chapter heading itself in blue ink; four lines in Chapter 22 have been crossed out in blue ink. Very good.

"The Political Department of the PLA [People's Liberation Army] published the first edition of Quotations from Chairman Mao in May 1964, and over the next three years issued no less than a billion copies of that soon-to-be-fetishized 'little red book.' It was the Defense Minister Lin Biao who orchestrated mass campaigns to study Mao's writings" (Meisner). Some years later, after Lin Biao's purported involvement in an assassination attempt against Mao, the people of China were told to remove Lin Biao's endorsement page from the front of their copies of the book, making intact copies such as this quite scarce.

Maurice J. Meisner, Mao Zedong, 164.