Details

Title

Silk: As Legend as Narrated in the Journals and Correspondence of Jan Po

Author

Merwin, Samuel.
Wyeth, N.C.

Physical Description

267 p. : ill. ; 19.3 x 12.9 cm

Place of Publication

Boston, MA and New York, NY

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Company

Edition

First Canadian

Copyright Date

1923 Show more1923-01-01T00:00:00.000Z
1923-01-01T00:00:00.000Z Show less

Collection

L.M. Montgomery Institute. Ryrie-Campbell Collection.

Donor

Donated by Donna Jane Campbell.

Note

This copy of Merwin's 'Silk' was owned by L.M. Montgomery and inscribed "L.M. Montgomery Macdonald November 1923." Samuel Merwin (1874-1936) was a prolific author of short stories, novels, and plays, as well as magazine and newspaper articles. He was the nephew of Frances Willard, prominent women's suffrage activist and president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Willard no doubt influenced Merwin's works, where women's voting rights and early feminist ideals are frequent themes. In the early 1900s, Merwin was sent to China to investigate the opium trade, and what he learned and saw there became the backdrop for many of his stories and his 1908 nonfiction work 'The Drugging of a Nation: The Story of China and the Opium Curse.' 'Silk' is a historical novel, framed largely as a first-person journal. The novel was also published in installments in McCall's Magazine throughout 1923. McCall's notes that the story follows "Jan Po, a young Chinese mandarin, [who] finds himself surrounded by the intrigue of a hostile court and beset by spies endeavoring to learn the secret of silk culture, the key to China’s commercial greatness." Each installment also featured a singular illustration by famed artist N.C. Wyeth, and the published novel collects all of these illustrations into the one volume. The full text can be read here.

Genre

book

Call Number(s)

952 SI P.LIB.LMM 1923