Our Notes & References

First edition of this exceedingly rare English grammar for Russian speakers, printed in Harbin, Manchuria, shortly after the end of World War One. At the time, the vast majority of Harbin’s population were immigrants from the Russian Empire. Many had settled there soon after the completion of the Russian-built Chinese Eastern Railway in 1898, but in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and Civil War there was a second massive influx of refugees consisting largely of White Russians. “Unlike the Russian émigrés who went to Paris or Prague or even to Shanghai, the new residents of Harbin were not a minority surrounded by a foreign population. They found themselves instead in an almost totally Russian city, populated mainly by people with roots in the south of European Russia.” The city had a Russian school system, as well as publishers of Russian-language newspapers and journals.” (Wikipedia)

Elly Shyre (Eli Schirovskaya, dates unknown) appears to have been teaching Russians children in Harbin to speak English. The work is divided into 17 chapters dealing with Letters, Syllables, Parts of Speech, Article, Nouns, Adjectives etc. but rather than providing an abstract introduction, all the points are addressed in simple questions and answers: For example: What is a syllable? A syllable is a sound produced by one effort of the voice. What does a syllable consist of? A syllable consists of letters. Can a syllable be formed without a Vowel? No, it cannot. What do we call a word containing only one syllable? We call it Mono-syllable, as man, big, was.”

Not in OCLC.

Provenance

E. I. Vakhrushev, Kharbin (bookseller’s ink stamp to final blank).