Immagine dell'autore.

Emily Hahn (1) (1905–1997)

Autore di Leonardo da Vinci

Per altri autori con il nome Emily Hahn, vedi la pagina di disambiguazione.

62+ opere 2,444 membri 24 recensioni

Sull'Autore

Fonte dell'immagine: estate of emily hahn

Serie

Opere di Emily Hahn

Leonardo da Vinci (1956) 781 copie
The Cooking of China (1968) 354 copie
The Soong Sisters (1941) 82 copie
Raffles of Singapore (1946) 29 copie
Once Upon a Pedestal (1974) 27 copie
England to Me: A Memoir (2013) 22 copie
Hong Kong Holiday (1946) 19 copie
Times and Places (1970) 17 copie
Francie (1951) 16 copie
Eve and the Apes (1988) 14 copie
Miss Jill (1947) 14 copie
Mr. Pan : A Memoir (2014) 9 copie
With Naked Foot (1934) 7 copie
Francie Comes Home (1959) 7 copie
James Brooke of Sarawak (1953) 6 copie
Aphra Behn (1951) 5 copie
On the Side of the Apes (1971) 5 copie
June Finds a Way (1960) — Autore — 5 copie
Beginners luck (2015) 3 copie
Francie Again (2015) 3 copie
Purple Passage (1950) 3 copie
Look Who's Talking! (1978) 2 copie
China A to Z (1946) 2 copie
Love of Gold (1980) 2 copie
Isaac Aboab (1959) 1 copia
Trove 1 copia

Opere correlate

Maiden Voyages: Writings of Women Travelers (1993) — Collaboratore — 192 copie
The Norton Book of Personal Essays (1997) — Collaboratore — 142 copie
55 Short Stories from The New Yorker, 1940 to 1950 (1949) — Collaboratore — 60 copie
The First Book of India (1955)alcune edizioni22 copie

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Data di nascita
1905-01-14
Data di morte
1997-02-18
Sesso
female
Nazionalità
USA
Luogo di nascita
St Louis, Missouri, USA
Luogo di morte
New York, New York, USA
Luogo di residenza
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Shanghai, China
Hong Kong
Dorset, England, UK
New York, New York, USA
Istruzione
University of Wisconsin-Madison (Mining Engineering ∙ 1926)
Columbia University
Oxford University
Attività lavorative
journalist
author
biographer
magazine writer
novelist
children's book author (mostra tutto 8)
oil geologist
mining engineer
Relazioni
Boxer, Charles R. (husband)
Organizzazioni
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature ∙ 1987)
The New Yorker
Breve biografia
Emily Hahn was born in St. Louis, Missouri, one of six daughters in a Jewish American family of German origin. Her parents were Isaac Newton Hahn, a dry goods salesman, and his wife Hannah Schoen Hahn, a suffragist. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when she was in high school. Emily initially enrolled in a general arts program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but changed her course of study to mining engineering after being told by a professor that the female mind was incapable of grasping mechanics or higher mathematics. In 1926, she became the first woman to receive a degree in Mining Engineering at the University. Prior to graduating, she drove 2,400 miles across the USA dressed as a man with a friend, Dorothy Raper. During the trip, she wrote about her travel experiences to her brother-in-law, who showed the letters to The New Yorker, jump-starting her career as a writer. Emily wrote for The New Yorker from 1929 to 1996. Her first book, the tongue-in-cheek Seductio ad Absurdum: The Principles and Practices of Seduction--A Beginner's Handbook, was published in 1930. She went on to study mineralogy at Columbia University and anthropology at Oxford, working in between as an oil geologist, a teacher, and a guide in New Mexico. She hiked across Central Africa in the 1930s. In 1935, she traveled to Shanghai, China, where she taught English for three years and became acquainted with prominent figures such as Sir Victor Sassoon, Mao Zedong, Zhou EnLai, and the Soong sisters. She had a romance with poet and publisher Shao Xunmei. After moving to Hong Kong, she began an affair with Major Charles Boxer, the local head of British army intelligence, with whom she had a daughter. When the Japanese army marched into Hong Kong a few weeks later in World War II, Maj. Boxer was imprisoned in a POW camp. Emily was brought in for questioning, but was not interned after she stated she was married to Shao Xunmei, and was sent back to the USA in 1943. Her book about this period, China to Me (1944) became an instant hit with the public. Her reunion with Boxer after the war also made headlines; the couple married and settled in Dorset, England, and had a second daughter. In 1950, Emily rented an apartment in New York, and from then on visited her husband and children in England only occasionally. She wrote biographies of Leonardo da Vinci, Aphra Behn, James Brooke, Fanny Burney, Chiang Kai-shek, D.H. Lawrence, and Mabel Dodge Luhan; books about cooking, zoos, diamonds, natural history, and travel; novels; and books for children. In total, she was the author of 54 books and nearly 200 articles.

Utenti

Recensioni

As a young age, James Brooke had a unique life. After he inherited a small fortune, he was interested in buying ships and starting new colonies. He imagined being able to save the souls of the Malays, but really he wanted an entire country to call his own. His confidence went out before him like a high school bully in naïve full swagger. From the beginning, Brooke was expecting Sultan Omar Ali to draw up papers - a deed of possession for Brooke to govern Sarawak, just like that. Once in charge Brooke was able to bring order to Sarawak. He established a council of state, an army, national flag, and a constitution. Twenty-four years after the fact he was finally recognized for his feats. He died four years after that. The end.
Hahn draws her biography of James Brooke from letters and journals that have survived time. A surprising tidbit of information was that Brooke was a mama's boy. But after thinking about his spoiled attitude, I don't know why I was so surprised by his letters home. Brooke never married, although there is the mystery of Ms. Angela Burdett-Coutts and the broken engagement...
I found it interesting that Hahn seemed to be, most of the time, sympathetic to Brooke. She writes with a conversational tone that is not dry or dull, but is more in defense of most of his actions and questionable character. She almost needs you to like Brooke as much as she apparently does. She uses words like "poor" and "unfortunate" to describe Brooke. She blames the reformers for having contradicting opinions about murder - almost calling them hypocrites for being against Brooke killing people of Borneo saying, "...we must try to understand how he could have acted as he did in various matters..." (p 223).
… (altro)
½
 
Segnalato
SeriousGrace | Mar 4, 2023 |
Writer Emily Hahn – known to her friends as Mickey – traveled from the USA to China in 1935 and she didn’t come home until she was repatriated – with her daughter – in 1943.

She hadn’t intended to stay for so long, but she found so many reasons to stay and establish a life there.

She was offered an interesting job, in newspaper journalism; and that led her into a business partnership and a romantic alliance with her – married – Chinese publisher.

She mixed with the rich and powerful, mainly British and other European expatriates.

She found and furnished an apartment in Shanghai’s red light district, and she kept a pet gibbon who she named Mr. Mills and who often accompanied her to social events.

Starting to read this book was a little like stepping into a party not knowing any of the other guests and catching the voice of a warm and witty raconteur with a great deal to talk about. I can’t say that I got the whole story straight, but I picked up lots of details and I was intrigued.

That might have happened because the author was a columnist for the New Yorker and was writing for an audience who already knew the shape of her story; it might be because she was anxious to publish this account but wary of saying too much during the war; and it could be significant that she had a serious opium habit for the first few years she spent in China ….

As time passed key events became a little clearer.

Mickey was commissioned to write a book about the three famous Soong sisters. Each sister had married a prominent Chinese men – military leader Chiang Kai-shek, revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, and wealthy finance minister Kung Hsiang-hsi – and each had used that to establish their own position of power and influence.

She traveled inland to the mountainous city of Chungking to interview the first of trio, and gaining her confidence and trust opened the doors she needed opening to complete her book.

There isn’t a great deal about the sisters in this book but there was enough to pique my curiosity, and to make me very glad that I have a copy of that book.

Then Mickey moved to Hong Kong. She began an affair with the local head of British army intelligence and she gave birth to their baby. That was planned, because she thought that a baby would steady her and he agreed ….

She was still in Hong Kong when the Japanese invaded – on the same day that they attacked Pearl Harbor. That raised this book from interesting to compelling, as she vividly describes of the confusion, the uncertainty, the deprivation and the fear of living under enemy rule. She struggled to feed and care for her infant daughter and to make sure her that her lover, who was a hospital-bound prisoner, had the food and medicine that he needed.

The book closes in 1943 when Mickey is repatriated to the US with her daughter; the outcome of the war and the fate of the man she loved still uncertain.

Emily Hahn was a proud feminist and fearless traveler, and the kind of woman who lived life as she felt it ought to be lived without waiting for the rules to be changed. That made her wonderful company, but it was her skill as a writer and her interest in the people around her that really elevated this memoir. She made clear and insightful observations about the people around her – and herself and how they dealt with cultural differences, the changes that politics and the war brought, and all of life’s ups and downs.

You won’t find a comprehensive account of the history that Emily Hahn lived through in this book, you won’t find much at all about people outside her social circle; and there is so much detail in more than four hundred pages that I can’t say that I took it all in. But I can say that those pages weren’t enough, because brought her own life back to life on the page so vividly and she really made me understand what it was like to be in her position.

I was sorry to part company, but I did understand that the book had reached a natural end.
… (altro)
 
Segnalato
BeyondEdenRock | 8 altre recensioni | Oct 25, 2018 |
Emily Hahn is most famous for her memoirs of pre-revolutionary China. This book, a compilation of articles written for the New Yorker magazine tell of her life in England in the years immediately after the end of World War II.

Han, her husband ( whom we only know as The Major) and their young daughter return to England from the far East to live on the Major's family estate. The England that Han describes is the austere postwar England where rationing still existed (and would exist until 1954), winters were freezing cold and none of the amenities that Americans (even in those days) were used to existed.

Hahn writes about it all in a jocular style, but living through those days would have been no picnic - even with the servants who seem to have still existed for the Major's class. This is an England that has disappeared forever, and that is probably a good thing. Still, it's fun to read about it now.
… (altro)
 
Segnalato
etxgardener | Jan 2, 2018 |
Certainly dated, but a fun look back at the "history of Bohemianism in America."
 
Segnalato
tloeffler | 1 altra recensione | Mar 25, 2017 |

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Statistiche

Opere
62
Opere correlate
6
Utenti
2,444
Popolarità
#10,495
Voto
½ 3.6
Recensioni
24
ISBN
101
Lingue
5

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