"Florence Ayscough--poet, translator, Sinologist, Shanghailander, avid collector, pioneering photographer and early feminist champion of women's rights in China. Ayscough's modernist translations of the classical poets still command respect, her ethnographic studies of the lives of Ch...

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Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Shen, Lindsay (Author)
Format:	Book
Language:	English
Published:	Hong Kong Hong Kong Univ. Press 2012
Series:	RAS China in Shanghai series
Subjects:	Ayscough, Florence Wheelock / 1878-1942 Ayscough, Florence > 1878-1942 Sinologists / Biography Women scholars / China / Biography Scholars / China / Biography Women translators / China / Biography Translators / China / Biography Women photographers / China / Biography Photographers / China / Biography Women collectors / China / Biography Schanghai Biografie
Summary:	"Florence Ayscough--poet, translator, Sinologist, Shanghailander, avid collector, pioneering photographer and early feminist champion of women's rights in China. Ayscough's modernist translations of the classical poets still command respect, her ethnographic studies of the lives of Chinese women still engender feminist critiques over three quarters of a century later and her collections of Chinese ceramics and objects now form an important part of several American museum's Asian art collections. Raised in Shanghai in an archetypal Shanghailander family in the late nineteenth century, Ayscough was to become anything but a typical foreigner in China. Encouraged by the New England poet Amy Lowell, she was to become a much sought after translator in the early years of the new century, not least for her radical interpretations of the Tang-dynasty poet Tu Fu. She later moved on to record China and particularly Chinese women using the new technology of photography, turn the Royal Asiatic Society's Shanghai library into the best on the China Coast and build several impressive collections featuring textiles, Ming and Qing ceramics. By the time of her death Florence Ayscough has left a legacy of collection and scholarship unrivalled by any other foreign woman in China before or since. In this biography, Lindsay Shen recovers Ayscough for posterity and returns her to us as a woman of amazing intellectual vibrancy and strength."--Publisher's website
Item Description:	Includes bibliographical references (p. [143]-157) and index Shanghailanders Guns, gardens and long-gone houses -- Images The tastemaker -- Words The 'sensuous realist' -- Gardens and the grass hut 'A liberal education' -- After China holding open the door
Physical Description:	X, 161 S. Ill., Kt. 18 cm
ISBN:	9789888139590 9888139592