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Author:   Pauline Yu
Publisher:   Columbia University Press
Imprint:   Columbia University Press
ISBN:  

9780231209434

ISBN 10:   0231209436
Pages:   336
Publication Date:   19 August 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

1. “An elegant and original volume” by the “most singular of women”: Invention or Translation? 2. “Going to China is like going to the moon”: France Encounters China 3. “One of the most interesting characters of his time”: Professor, Baron, Barnum, or Rake? 4. “For a woman the word impossible no longer exists”: The Challenges of Chinese Poetry 5. “The Celestial Empire unfurls completely throughout this book”: The 1867 Book of Jade 6. “Brushing up against the famous”: Judith Gautier’s Artistic Connections 7. “Greatly enlarged and rigorously corrected”: The Book of Jade, 1902 8. “Radiated beyond the scholarly world”: An Extraordinary Afterlife Epilogue: “One of the most original talents in contemporary literature” Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index

Reviews

The Book of Jade, a volume of poems published in 1867 by “Judith Walter,” astounded the French literary world. Was it Chinese poetry in French translation? Was its pseudonymous creator the author or the translator? Pauline Yu brilliantly illuminates the history, mysteries, “outsized influence, and robust afterlife” of this extraordinary work. -- Jean Strouse, author of <i>Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers</i> This book deals with far more than Gautier’s Book of Jade—it paints a richly colored portrait of late-nineteenth century French culture, the emerging world of Chinese studies in Europe, and much more. Yu deftly employs the double lens of Gautier’s books and her life through which to explore the impact of both, moving between biographical, cultural, and literary frames with grace. -- Anna M. Shields, author of <i>One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China</i>

The Book of Jade, a volume of poems published in 1867 by “Judith Walter,” astounded the French literary world. Was it Chinese poetry in French translation? Was its pseudonymous creator the author or the translator? Pauline Yu brilliantly illuminates the history, mysteries, “outsized influence, and robust afterlife” of this extraordinary work. -- Jean Strouse, author of <i>Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers</i> This book deals with far more than Gautier’s Book of Jade—it paints a richly colored portrait of late-nineteenth century French culture, the emerging world of Chinese studies in Europe, and much more. Yu deftly employs the double lens of Gautier’s books and her life through which to explore the impact of both, moving between biographical, cultural, and literary frames with grace. -- Anna M. Shields, author of <i>One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China</i> In Chinese Songs in a French Key, Pauline Yu masterfully and suspensefully uncovers the remarkable story of Judith Gautier, the French translator, novelist, poet, and essayist who was responsible for introducing Paris and the West to Chinese poetry and for influencing the nineteenth-century artistic and literary imagination. Yu’s evocative portrait of Gautier is at once an inspiration and a revelation. -- Elizabeth Birkelund, author of <i>A Northern Light in Provence: A Novel</i>

Author Information

Pauline Yu is president emerita of the American Council of Learned Societies. She is the author or editor of five books on Chinese and comparative literature. Yu serves on several philanthropic and nonprofit boards and was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 2022.

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