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Knowledge is Pleasure: Florence Ayscough in Shanghai
Lindsay Shen, MA 1989; PhD 1994
Florence Ayscough was a poet, translator, garden designer, Sinologist, art collector, and early champion of women's rights in China. Ayscough's modernist translations of classical Chinese poets still command respect, her ethnographic studies of Chinese women still attract attention, and her collections of Chinese art are part of major American museums' Asian art holdings.
Born and raised in Shanghai in an archetypal wealthy Shanghailander family in the late 19th century, Ayscough was anything but the typical expatriate in Concession-era China. Encouraged by American 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.
By the time of her death in 1942 she left a legacy of scholarship unrivalled by any other foreign woman in China. Lindsay Shen graduated with an MA and PhD from St. Andrews University. She worked in universities and museums in the UK and USA, and since 2007 has lived in Shanghai, researching western women's experience in Concession-era China.
Her book has been described as "a sensitive and elegantly written biography of one of the most passionate Sinologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries".
ISBN: 978-988-8139-59-0
