Altering the original fables to suit Chinese notions": A case study of Robert Thom’s Yishi yuyan 意拾喻言 (1840)

This is the first study to take a comprehensive look at transnational children’s literature in the period before 1900. The chapters examine what we mean by ‘children’s literature’ in this period, as well as what we mean by ‘transnational’ in the context of children’s culture. They investigate who transmitted children’s books across borders (authors, illustrators, translators, publishers, teachers, relatives, readers), through what networks the books were spread (commercial, religious, colonial, public, familial), and how the new local identities of imported texts were negotiated. They ask which kinds of books were the most mobile, and they consider what happens to texts when they migrate, as well as what effects transnational dissemination had on individual readers, and on societies and cultures more broadly. Geographically, the case studies gathered here range right across Europe, from Dublin to St Petersburg, then onto North America, India and China. They extend widely across the many genres and formats of children’s reading, from cheap print such as almanacs and ABCs to fairy tales and fables, children’s novels, textbooks, and beautifully illustrated gift-books.