This book examines the development of Chinese children's literature from
the late Qing to early Republican era. It highlights the transnational
flows of knowledge, texts, and cultures during a time when children's
literature in China and the West was developing rapidly. Drawing from a
rich archive of periodicals, novels, tracts, primers, and textbooks, the
author analyzes how Chinese children's literature published by
Protestant missionaries and Chinese educators in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries presented varying notions of childhood. In
this period of dramatic transition from the dynastic Qing empire to the
new Republican China, young readers were offered different models of
childhood, some of which challenged dominant Confucian ideas of what it
meant to be a child. This volume sheds new light on a little-explored
aspect of Chinese literary history. Through its contributions to the
fields of children's literature, book history, missionary history, and
translation studies, it enhances our understanding of the negotiations
between Chinese and Western cultures that shaped the publication and
reception of Chinese texts for children.