Ukers William H. All about Tea. Volume 2

New York: The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company, 1935. — 581 p.Twenty-five years ago the author made his first visit to the tea countries of the Orient and began to collect material for a work on tea. After the initial surveys, researching started in the principal European and American libraries and museums; this phase of the work continued up to the return of the final proofs to the printer in 1935.
The sorting and classification of the material was begun twelve years ago. Subsequently, the author spent a year in travel among the tea countries, to revise and bring up to date the data already in hand. The actual writing of the manuscript has extended over ten years.
The originally-contemplated single-volume companion to All About Coffee had to be abandoned as it was found impossible to do justice to the subject in one volume. The two volumes of All About Tea contain fifty-four chapters, 1152 pages and approximately 600,000 words. Among the unique features of the work are: a Complete Reference Table of the principal kinds of tea grown in the world; a Tea Thesaurus; a Tea Chronology containing 500 dates of historical importance; a Tea Bibliography containing 2000 authors and titles; a Tea Dictionary of 425 definitions, and an Index of 10,000 references.
Since Lu Yu wrote the Ch'a Ching, or “Tea Scripture”, in a.d. 780, scores of books on tea have been published. These have dealt mostly with specific phases of the subject, and have not always been free from propaganda. There has been no serious work of a general character in English in forty years. This is the first independent work fully covering all phases, and it is intended to appeal to the general reader as well as to those directly associated with tea.
All historical references have been checked by researches among the original sources. The trade and technical chapters have been passed upon by competent authorities. No effort has been spared to make the work exhaustive and authoritative.
In addition to the more formal acknowledgments elsewhere, the author wishes to thank all those who have lent a hand in the preparation of All About Tea. The work has been made possible by the fine, unselfish cooperation of many in and out of the trade and industry who have assisted in the researches as a scientific contribution to our knowledge of tea.