Manchu Decadence by Edmund Trelawny Backhouse
In 1898 a young Englishman walked into a homosexual brothel in Peking and began a journey that he claims took him all the way to the bedchamber of imperial China's last great ruler, the Empress Dowager Tz'u Hsi. Published now for the first time, the controversial memoirs of Sinologist Sir Edmund Backhouse provide a unique and shocking glimpse into the hidden world of China's imperial palace, with its rampant corruption, grand conspiracies, and uninhibited sexuality. Backhouse was made notorious by Hugh Trevor-Roper's 1976 bestseller Hermit of Peking, which accused Backhouse of fraudulence and forgery. This work, written shortly before Backhouse's death in 1943, lay for decades forgotten and unpublished in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, dismissed by Trevor-Roper as nothing more than a pornographic novelette. But D cadence Mandchoue is much more than that. Alternately shocking and lyrical, it is the masterwork of a linguistic genius--a tremendous literary achievement and a sensational account of the inner workings of the Manchu dynasty in the years before its collapse in 1911. If true, Backhouse's chronicle completely reshapes contemporary historians' understanding of the era and provides an account of the Empress Dowager and her inner circle that can only be described as intimate.
Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse (1873-1944), Baronet, arrived in Peking in 1898 and quickly became the city's most respected translator, working for both the British Foreign Service and correspondent of the London Times George Morrison. He was co-author, with J.O.P. Bland, on China under the Empress Dowager (1910) and Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking (1914). Considered a brilliant linguist and Chinese scholar in his day, and the subject of great controversy in the time since, Backhouse's reputation was posthumously tarnished when it was discovered that much of his work was based upon forged documents and false pretenses. His precise role in the alleged deceptions remains one of the great puzzles of Chinese scholarship. Derek Sandhaus is a China scholar and the author of Tales of Old Hong Kong and Tales of Old Peking.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9789881998286 |
| ISBN 10 | 988199828X |
| Title | Manchu Decadence |
| Author | Edmund Trelawny Backhouse |
| Series | China History |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Earnshaw Books Limited |
| Year published | 2016-01-30 |
| Number of pages | 390 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |