Contents

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. List of Illustrations vi
4. Notes on Contributors vii
5. Introduction: Writing China 1
6. Urbanization, Generic Forms, and Early Modernity: A Correlative Comparison of Wu Cheng’en and Spenser’s Rural-Pastoral Poems 11
7. Master Zhuang’s Wife: Translating the Ephesian Matron in Thomas Percy’s The Matrons (1762) 32
8. The Dark Gift: Opium, John Francis Davis, Thomas De Quincey, and the Amherst Embassy to China of 1816 56
9. The Amherst Embassy in the Shadow of Tambora: Climate and Culture, 1816 83
10. Tea and the Limits of Orientalism in De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater 105
11. Binding and Unbinding Chinese Feet in the Mid-Century Victorian Press 132
12. Elective Affinities? Two Moments of Encounter with Oscar Wilde’s Writings 152
13. ‘Lost Horizon’: Orientalism and the Question of Tibet 167
14. Index 188