Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Century-old books about Korea

Over at the Marmot's Hole a week or two ago, Robert linked to a 100-year-old book about Korea at archive.org. As it turns out, there are more than a few old books about Korea there. This is just what I've found so far:


Narrative of a voyage in His Majesty's late ship Alceste, to the Yellow Sea, along the coast of Corea, and through its numerous hitherto undiscovered islands, to the island of Lewchew : with an account of her shipwreck in the straits of Gaspar - M'Leod, John, 1817

The new glories of the Catholic Church - Wiseman, Nicholas Patrick, 1859

Corea of today - Gilmore, George W. 1894

Corea, the hermit nation - Griffis, William Elliot 1894

Problems of the Far East: Japan - Korea - China - Curzon, George Nathaniel 1894

Quaint Korea - Miln, Louise Jordan 1895

Corea; or, Cho-sen, the land of the morning calm - Landor, Arnold Henry Savage 1895

The life of Rev. William James Hall, M. D. : medical missionary to the slums of New York, pioneer missionary to Pyong Yang, Korea - Hall, Rosetta Sherwood 1897

Korean sketches - Gale, James Scarth, 1898

The vanguard, a tale of Korea - Gale, James Scarth 1904

Fifteen years among the top-knots; or, Life in Korea - Underwood, Lillias H. 1904

China's intercourse with Korea from the XVth century to 1895 - Rockhill, William Woodville 1905

The passing of Korea - Hulbert, Homer B. 1906

Ewa : a tale of Korea - Noble, W. Arthur 1906

In Korea with Marquis Ito - Ladd, George Trumbull 1908

A modern pioneer in Korea : the life story of Henry G. Appenzeller - Griffis, William Elliot 1912

The church in Corea - Trollope, Mark Napier 1915

For the faith : life of Just de Bretenières, martyred in Korea, March 8, 1866 - Appert, Camille, 1918

A diplomat's helpmate ; how Rose F. Foote, wife of the first U.S. Minister and envoy entraordinary to Korea, served her country in the Far East, - Lawrence, Mary Viola Tingley 1918

Administrative reforms in Korea; articles reprinted from the "Seoul Press." 1919

Korea S Fight For Freedom Mckenzie, F. A. (Frederick Arthur) 1920

The new administration in Chosen. Comp. by the government-general of Chosen. July, 1921


The Passing of Korea and In Korea with Marquis Ito have been interesting to read, as has Fifteen Years Among the Topknots, which has personal observations of Korea's history between 1890 and 1904. Quaint Korea (reviewed in Korea Bug) was written by a women who had never been to Korea (!); Corea, or Cho-sen, land of the Morning Calm is fun to read, due in no small part to the writer's personality. And that's just scratching the surface.

I'll link to more books as they turn up.

2 comments:

Stefan Ewing said...

There are yet more titles of one searches for "Korea" under "Canadian Libraries" (results here), and that search only brings up the University of Toronto for some reason, so there may be still more stuff waiting to be discovered.

Stefan Ewing said...

Actually, it looks like maybe you got them all. Just in case, here's what appears to be the results of a global search across all text collections (maybe you've already run this search):

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=korea%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts