LCSNA Grant Recipient Yunshu Qiu

4:00 PM Pacific/ 7:00 PM Eastern/ 11:59 PM UK

Join this Zoom webinar on January 11.

Through Atlantic and What I Found There: The Chinese Translations and Adaptations of the Alice books in American Archives presented by Yunshu Qiu

Partly funded by the Stan Marx Fund of the LCSNA, I visited two major archives in the United States last summer: the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. Both archives hold extensive materials relating to the Chinese translations and adaptations of the Alice books. 

The Bancroft Library houses the papers of Yuen Ren Chao 趙元任, the first Chinese translator of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Had the Shanghai publishing house not been bombed by the Japanese army, he would also have published the second Chinese translation of Through the Looking-Glass. After moving to the United States in the 1940s and later becoming Professor of Chinese Linguistics at UC Berkeley, Chao donated his papers to the Bancroft after retirement. The archive contains his personal and professional correspondence, research files, manuscripts, teaching materials, and personal documents. It preserves a wealth of Alice-related materials, particularly his multiple versions of the translation of Through the Looking-Glass produced across forty years. 

The Harry Ransom Center holds three Alice-related collections: the Charles Lutwidge Dodgson Collection, the Byron W. Sewell and Susan R. Sewell Collection of Lewis Carroll, and the Warren Weaver Collection. Although the first two collections are valuable and illuminating, the Warren Weaver Collection is especially significant for my research, as it includes several early Chinese translations and adaptations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 

This presentation will highlight my findings from these two archives and offer some preliminary reflections on their implications for my study of Chinese Alice translations.

Yunshu Qiu is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literatures and Cultures at the University of Bristol (England, UK). She was awarded an LCSNA grant from the Stan Marx Fund to support archival research at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Texas at Austin on “Through Eurasia and What Alice Found There: the Early Chinese Translation and Reception of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books.” More info on this event coming soon!