西洋金瓶梅 (Xiyang Jin Ping Mei)

First fascicle of the abridged Chinese translation of My Life and Loves, the erotic autobiography of Frank Harris, the Irish-American writer also known for his biography of Bernard Shaw. In the title of this edition, Harris's work is likened to the Jin Ping Mei, the great classical Chinese erotic novel.

Printed wrappers lightly soiled, toned and creased, small tears to spine, first leaf detached, some further soiling and tears to the leaves.

Extremely rare Chinese adaptation of a long-banned licentious autobiography.

Recounting the life and sexual adventures of Frank Harris, My Life and Loves was banned in Great Britain and the United States for forty years, while its author was prosecuted in France in 1926 for offending public decency. Published in four volumes between 1922 and 1927, the work also described Harris's encounters with George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Guy de Maupassant, Emile Zola, Auguste Rodin, Alphonse Daudet, Karl Marx and Otto von Bismarck, about whom it disclosed a good deal of scandal and gossip. 

Rather than giving a literal translation of the work, the Chinese translator, whose name we have been unable to read, offered an abridged version. It was printed as a slim booklet, whose presentation seems well suited to discreet circulation. The title given to this adaptation, The Western Jin Ping Mei, refers to a work immediately evocative for Chinese readers, while the original title, also mentioned in the preface, is given there in the erroneous form: My Life and My Love.

Only three Chinese editions are known to us, one directly and two others indirectly. One edition, printed without place or date, is held at the National Cheng Kung University Library in Taiwan, but its dimensions do not match those of our copy. The other two, likewise without place or date, are mentioned on an advertisement leaf bound into another rare work: 艷女思情 [The Amorous Longings of a Beautiful Woman]. A copy of that work belongs to the collection of Chinese popular and erotic literature assembled by the sinologist Wolfram Eberhard and held at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. Among the editions advertised are the titles My Life and Love[s] and Xiyang Jin Ping Mei 西洋金瓶梅 [The Western Jin Ping Mei], of 144 pages. These erotic publications of marginal circulation, often issued without place or date, remain particularly difficult to document today.

Although nothing seems to allow this edition to be dated precisely, the translator's preface makes it possible to situate it within a specific cultural context. Introducing the work, he states: "Harris is an Irish writer; he is the author of the Biography of Bernard Shaw, warmly recommended by Mr. Lin Yutang". Lin Yutang, a Chinese writer, essayist and translator with a perfect command of English, played, from the 1920s onwards, a major part in literary exchanges between China and the West, and introduced the concept of youmo ("humour") into modern Chinese culture. In 1933, he met George Bernard Shaw in person and was able to discuss with him his biography written by Frank Harris. A highly esteemed figure in the Chinese literary world at the time, Lin Yutang could, through his favourable opinion of Harris, serve as a guarantee for the reader and legitimise, by association, the discovery of this licentious work.

A curious booklet bearing witness to the taste for Western erotic literature in Chinese-speaking circles and to the means employed to ensure its clandestine circulation.