Legends and Legerdemain in Nine Stories from the Celestial Empire
Joe Sample
Abstract
This article introduces an obscure collection of English-language stories about China written by a little-known author and in a popular but understudied style. Thomas Henry Sealy’s The Porcelain Tower; or, Nine Stories of China (1841) is a book of comic prose and verse, with illustrations by John Leech, that has not received scholarly attention despite its popularity in the decade following the First Opium War (1839–1841). Although few characters in the stories are admirable, and many are barbaric, conceited and untrustworthy, The Porcelain Tower is important in the history of the comic vision of China and an opportunity to reconsider the range and complexity of the textual and visual presence of things Chinese in the Western literary and rhetorical imaginations early in the Victorian era.
Keywords
Thomas Henry Sealy; The Porcelain Tower; or, Nine Stories of China; John Leech; comic prose and verse; customs-and-manners books; Punch
Date of Acceptance: 7 July 2025
Date of Publication: 10 July 2025
Double Blind Peer Reviewed
Recommended Citation:
Sample, Joe. 2025. “Legends and Legerdemain in Nine Stories from the Celestial Empire.” Victorian Popular Fictions, 7.1: 97-113. ISSN: 2632-4253 (online) DOI: https://doi.org/10.46911/ZFRY7364
Return to Contents page of VPFJ 7.1
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
