MAO TSE-TUNG (1893-1976), The ‘Little Red Book’ Mao Zhu Xi Yu Lu [Quotations from Chairman Mao] [Beijing, General Political Department of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, 1964]. Text in Chinese. First edition.

250 p. Original red vinyl with blind-stamped lettering and star on the front cover. Half-title printed in red, title page in red and green with double-line imprint, tissue guard and portrait of Chairman Mao printed in sepia, uncorrected calligraphic endorsement leaf of Lin Biao printed in black, 2 pages of preface, 2 pages of contents. 14 x 10.5 cm. Some soiling and staining of the cover, foxing, red stamp on the endpaper. The more famous edition with the red vinyl cover was printed at the same time as the first editions with paper covers; however, the vinyl covers took longer to produce and were therefore released shortly afterwards. Copies with paper covers were intended for army officers, while copies with red vinyl covers were produced for distribution among squads of up to eight soldiers (Schiller, Quotations from Chairman Mao. A Short Bibliographical Study, The Grolier Club, New York, 2014). The book ‘Quotations from Chairman Mao’, sometimes referred to as the ‘Chinese Bible’, was first published in a very restricted print run in May 1964 and probably still holds the world record for the number of copies printed in less than four years: by the end of 1967, 720 million copies had been printed (Oliver Lei Han).