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Representations of China in British children's fiction, 1851-1911

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posted on 2013-01-01, 00:00 authored by Sue ChenSue Chen
Representations of China in British children's fiction, 1851-1911

History

Series

Ashgate Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present

Pagination

1 - 218

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing

Place of publication

Farnham, Surrey

ISBN-13

9781472403414

ISBN-10

147240341X

Language

eng

Notes

In her extensively researched exploration of China in British children’s literature, Shih-Wen Chen provides a sustained critique of the reductive dichotomies that have limited insight into the cultural and educative role these fictions played in disseminating ideas and knowledge about China. Chen considers a range of different genres and types of publication-travelogue storybooks, historical novels, adventure stories, and periodicals-to demonstrate the diversity of images of China in the Victorian and Edwardian imagination. Turning a critical eye on popular and prolific writers such as Anne Bowman, William Dalton, Edwin Harcourt Burrage, Bessie Marchant, G.A. Henty, and Charles Gilson, Chen shows how Sino-British relations were influential in the representation of China in children’s literature, challenges the notion that nineteenth-century children’s literature simply parroted the dominant ideologies of the age, and offers insights into how attitudes towards children’s relationship with knowledge changed over the course of the century. Her book provides a fresh context for understanding how China was constructed in the period from 1851 to 1911 and sheds light on British cultural history and the history and uses of children’s literature.

Publication classification

A1.1 Books - authored - research

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