讀Hong Kong Government Gazette 2

A. What are on Wyndham Street (雲咸街), apart from newspaper and printing houses?
1. 1885: House no. 47, The Female Prison
Source: Government Notification no. 372, GA 1885 no.372.

B. Weather tables/reports / Meteorological observation
Published from 1860 to 1887, data collected from Victoria Peak, Praya East, Kowloon Bay etc. include temperature, humidity, wind, rainfull, duration of sunshine etc.
Meteorological observations, since 1861, were reported by the Government Civil Hospital and later the Royal Observatory.

C. International Exhibition
Includes prospectus, catalogues, invitation etc. of various International Exhibitions in Nuremberg, Amsterdam, Dublin, Paris, London, Melbourne, New Zealand, Chicago, Jamaica, Tasmania etc.

讀Hong Kong Government Gazette 1

馮扶，何許人？
1. 曾任“革命機關報之元祖”《中國日報》（註１）的英文翻譯。
註１：1900年，孫中山等革命黨人在香港創辦之報章，社址在香港中環丹利街24號。1905年中國同盟會成立時旋即成為該會的機關報。
資料來源：思想．信仰．力量－－廣州報刊在辛亥革命中的地位與作用
http://www.tourtaiwan.org/crn-webapp/cbspub/secDetail.jsp?bookid=10523&secid=10658

2. According to GA 1880, Fung Fu, the Master of an Anglo-Chinese School in the Third Street, Sai-ying-pun, was awarded a $25 reward for the school being classed as "very good" for the year 1879 . Having had a collegiate education in America, the master Fung was recognised as "a thoroughly competent teacher."
Source: Prize Distribution at Government Schools and a Grant-in-Aid School, GA 1880 11-Feb-1880, pp. 144-152.

Question: Are the two named Fungs the same person? According to an article on 中國文化研究所學報 (to be located in vol. 18-19, 1987-88, p. 414), they should be the same person.

Colonial India and the Raj

Was lazy last month, not because of lack of time or energy, but lack of motivation to add words on the blog. Been reading colonial India stuff because of a constructive note from Peter Korniki.

First of all, it is Rimi B. Chatterjee's inspiring book Empires of the Mind: A History of the Oxford University Press in India under the Raj (New Delhi: OUP, 2006) in which I have found the clues of K & W in engagining trans-continental book trade with OUP long before the note. I have now began a closer reading on this rich archival works. Gyan Prakash's illunimating work: Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (PUP, 1999), which has become the classics in the field of the Raj, and, to a larger extent, colonial form of knowledge, is another work I found interesting.

I need a well-defined framework for K & W, or broadly speaking, British cultural colonialism/imperialism to make significant historial sense.

Lazy Nov and Hard-working Dec

Was lazy last month, not because of lack of time or energy, but lack of motivation to add words on the blog. Been reading colonial India stuff since a note from Peter Kornici

Gyan Prakash, Another Reason : Science and the Imagination of Modern India (PUP, 1999).

Rimi B. Chatterjee, Empires of the Mind : A History of the Oxford University Press in India under the Raj (New Delhi: OUP, 2006).

香港舊報紙（一）

翻檢香港舊報紙已有一年多的時間，除了K & W和Brewer的書目廣告以外，偶然會留意其他的廣告，諸如Lane, Crawford, Diary Farm, Moutrie, Jonnie Walker, Nestle, Falconer, Wing On, A-fong, 各間大小酒店(如Hongkong Hotel, Wydham Hotel, Peak Hotel, Kowloon Hotel等等)。當然還有報館本身的書目及印刷廣告，特別是Hongkong Daily Press，出版及印刺的書類品甚多，其出版的Directory and Chronicle除了銷售到中國國內主要的港口及城市之外，更遠銷至Singapore, Penang, Sydney, Calcultta, Berlin, Paris, London, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo等地，更不用說它早在二十世紀初已在London著名的新聞街Fleet Street設立辦公室了。

最有意思和研究價值的，我認為是洋人社會活動的廣告，例如Theatre Royal的廣告。在City Hall的Theatre Royal舉行的演唱會和話劇，既有本地洋人的業餘話劇團，也有外來的話劇團，上演Shakespeare的十二夜，也有來自意大利的馬戲團。這些演出的入場券幾乎都可以在K & W或Moutrie買到。晚上10時左右，City Hall的表演完結後，觀眾一湧而散，住在山頂上的洋人也不愁要苦等山頂纜車。山頂纜車營運至晚上十二時，適逢City Hall舉行晚演，都會加密班次，由平常夜間的三十分鐘一班加密至十五分鐘一班，幾乎與日間的班次密度一樣。

日本洋学史 & Circulating libraries

宮永孝：《日本洋学史：葡．羅．蘭．英．独．仏．露語の受容》（東京：三修社，2004）。

Edward Jacobs, "Eighteenth-century British Circulating Libraries and Cultural Book History," Book History, 1 -21.

Book history & Imperial historiography

Robert Darnton, "What is the History of Books?" The Book History Reader

Antoinette Burton, “Rules of Thumb: British History and ‘Imperial Culture’ in Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain,” Women’s History Review, vol. 3, no. 4 (1994), 483 – 501.

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899, 1902).

Conrad's most acclaimed and controversial works. Finished one-fourth. Boring...indeed.

K & W part I

Kelly & Walsh's Hand-book to Hongkong (1893, 1908).

Why the original 1893 edition could not be checked out or photographed? BTW, the Xerox copy of the 1908 edition in the HKUL seems to be from the National Diet Library, Japan. From Faure? Lee?

Imperial publishing

Today's reading:

Leslie Howsam, "Imperial Publishers And The Idea Of Colonial History, 1870-1916," History of Intellectual Culture, vol. 5, no. 1 (2005).
http://www.ucalgary.ca/hic/website/2005/papers/lhowsam_frameset.html

Abstract
Drawing on correspondence in their archives, this article discusses British publishers' engagement with the problem of colonial history from the 1870s to 1916. This was the period when history was becoming professionalized but, apart from J.R. Seeley, few academic historians were writing marketable books on imperial subjects. The publishers turned instead to colonial administrators or journalists while failing to recognize the originality of texts by colonists themselves. The methodology is a juxtaposition of historiographical issues with those raised by scholarship in the history of the book and print culture. The publishing history of Seeley's Expansion of England (Macmillan, 1883) is followed by three case studies concerning imperial narratives in English publishing houses: Oxford and Cambridge University Presses, and Macmillan & Co. The central argument is that the agency of publishers in the composition and conceptualization, as well as the marketing, of colonial histories has been neglected. The essay nuances the debates about early imperial historiography and enriches book-history scholarship by extending its methodologies to non-fictional sources.