Décadence Mandchoue The China Memoirs of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse

by Trelawny Backhouse, Edmund; Sandhaus, Derek

• ISBN13: 9789881944511
• ISBN10: 9881944511
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-04-01
• Publisher: Earnshaw Books

Summary

In 1898 a young Englishman walked into a homosexual brothel in Peking and began a journey that he claims took him all the way to the bedchamber of imperial China's last great ruler, the Empress Dowager Tz'u Hsi. Published now for the first time, the controversial memoirs of Sinologist Sir Edmund Backhouse provide a unique and shocking glimpse into the hidden world of China's imperial palace, with its rampant corruption, grand conspiracies, and uninhibited sexuality. Backhouse was made notorious by Hugh Trevor-Roper's 1976 bestseller Hermit of Peking, which accused Backhouse of fraudulence and forgery. This work, written shortly before the author's death in 1943, lay for decades forgotten and unpublished in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, dismissed by Trevor-Roper as nothing more than "a pornographic novelette." But Decadence Mandchoueis much more than that. Alternately shocking and lyrical, it is the masterwork of a linguistic genius--a tremendous literary achievement and a sensational account of the inner workings of the Manchu dynasty in the years before its collapse in 1911. If true, Backhouse's chronicle completely reshapes contemporary historians' understanding of the era and provides an account of the Empress Dowager and her inner circle that can only be described as intimate.

Author Biography

Edmund Trelawny Backhouse was a translator who worked in China for the British Foreign Service as well as for London Times correspondent George Morrison. He is the coauthor of Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking and China under the Empress Dowager. Derek Sandhaus is the chief editor of Earnshaw Books and the author of Tales of Old Hong Kong and Tales of Old Peking.

Table of Contents

Edmund Backhouse in His Mid-Forties
Introduction By the Editor	p. ix
Notes on the Edition	p. xxvi
Acknowledgments	p. xxxix
Décadence Mandchoue
Dedication	p. xxxiii
Foreword to the Reader	p. xxxv
Introductory Mottoes	p. xxxvii
Peking Interlude	p. 1
The Beginning of a Time	p. 20
His Excellency Junglu	p. 41
Summer Palace Nocturne	p. 59
Eunuch Diversions	p. 75
The Hammam and the Intrusion	p. 95
Under the Mulberry Bush	p. 112
The Vampire Prince	p. 125
The Fire from Heaven	p. 135
Le Cabinet Secret de la Vie	p. 148
A Hair-Breadth Escape	p. 158
The Mantle of Cagliostro	p. 168
The Letter and the Judgment	p. 181
The Demon-Ridden Eunuch	p. 196
The White Cloud Temple	p. 214
Her Last Autumn Picnic	p. 223
Their Mortal Hour	p. 240
The Desecrated Mausolea	p. 256
A Retrospect of Diviner Hours	p. 262
Appendix
Postscript	p. 277
Specimens of the Original Manuscripts	p. 294
The Author in the Early Nineteen-Forties	p. 296
The Author on His Deathbed	p. 297
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