This 1868 work recounts an early success of the future Gordon of Khartoum, in China in 1863-1864.

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.

Li Hsiu-ch'eng - the Loyal Prince - was the most important military leader on the rebel side during the last years of the Taiping Rebellion in China (1851-64). The Taiping Rebellion has been called the greatest popular revolt in modern history, and it came remarkably close to toppling the Ch'ing empire some fifty years before it was finally overthrown in 1911. Captured in June 1864 by government forces, Li Hsiu-ch'eng spent the final days before his inevitable execution writing a personal account of the Rebellion and his role in it. His Deposition is the fullest narrative by a participant and an invaluable historical document. The original manuscript of the Deposition was withheld by the government commander Tseng Kuo-fan and his descendants, and a shortened, bowdlerized version prepared for publication. Li himself was considered a great revolutionary hero in China until the Cultural Revolution when he was reassessed in a major public debate of considerable political significance.