National Culture Wars in Imperial Great Britain

This grant will help fund three weeks of research at major libraries in China to the specific end of completing chapter 5, “Johnson and the Lure of Asia,: in my book, National Culture Wars in the Imperial Great Britain during the Age of Johnson, for Penn State University Press. My focus is the relationship of Samuel Johnson (with his friend, Oliver Goldsmith) and the first encyclopedic account of Asia in the West, Jean Baptiste Du Halde’s Description of China (1735: 1738-41). I have access to three archives preserving Du Halde’s folio texts and records at the National Library of China, Hubei Provicial Library, and Shanghai Library. These archival materials offer the much needed context for my writing about four unknown essays about China by Johnson. Thus, this grant will help make public an important literary discovery concerning one of the greatest English authors