Emily Hahn
Encyclopedia
Emily Hahn was an American
journalist and author. Called "a forgotten American literary treasure" by The New Yorker
magazine, she was the author of 52 books and more than 180 articles and stories. Her writings in the 20th century played a significant role in opening up Asia
to the west.
Missouri
on January 14, 1905. Nicknamed "Mickey", she moved with her family to Chicago
, Illinois
when she was 15. In her memoir No Hurry to Get Home, she describes how being prevented from taking a chemistry class in which she was interested caused her to switch her course of study from English to Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
. In 1926 she was the first women to receive a degree there in Mining Engineering—despite the coolness of the administration and most of her male classmates. It was a testament to her intelligence and persistence that her lab partner grudgingly admitted, "you ain't so dumb!"
After graduation she worked briefly for an engineering company in Illinois, before traveling 2400 miles (3,862.4 km) across the United States
by car with a female friend, both disguised as men, and then working as a "Harvey Girl
" tour guide in New Mexico
. Later she traveled to the Belgian Congo
, where she worked for the Red Cross, and lived with a pygmy
tribe for two years, before crossing Central Africa
alone on foot.
Her first book, Seductio ad Absurdum: The Principles and Practices of Seduction
--A Beginner's Handbook (1930), was a tongue-in-cheek exploration of how men court women. Maxim Lieber
was her literary agent, 1930-1931.
, China
(from 1935 to the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941) were the most tumultuous of her life. There she became involved with prominent Shanghai figures, such as the wealthy Sir Victor Sassoon, and was in the habit of taking her pet gibbon
, Mr. Mills, with her to dinner parties, dressed in a diaper and a minute dinner jacket.
Supporting herself as a writer for The New Yorker, she lived in an apartment in Shanghai's red light district, and became romantically involved with the Chinese poet and publisher Sinmay Zau . He gave her the entrée that enabled her to write a biography of the famous Soong sisters
, one of whom was married to Sun Yat-sen
and another to Chiang Kai-shek
.
Hahn frequently visited Sinmay's house, which was highly unconventional for a Western woman in the 1930s. The Treaty of the Bogue
was in full effect, and Shanghai was a city divided by Chinese and Westerners at the time. Sinmay introduced her to the practice of smoking opium
, to which she became addicted
. She later wrote, "Though I had always wanted to be an opium addict, I can't claim that as the reason I went to China."
After moving to Hong Kong, she began an affair with Charles Boxer
, the local head of British army intelligence. According to a December 1944 Time
article, Hahn "decided that she needed the steadying influence of a baby, but doubted if she could have one. 'Nonsense!' said the unhappily-married Major Charles Boxer, 'I'll let you have one!' Carola Militia Boxer was born in Hong Kong on October 17, 1941".
When the Japanese marched into Hong Kong a few weeks later Boxer was imprisoned in a POW
camp, and Hahn was brought in for questioning. "Why?" screamed the Japanese Chief of Gendarmes, "why ... you have baby with Major Boxer?" "Because I'm a bad girl," she quipped. Fortunately for her, the Japanese respected Boxer's record of wily diplomacy.
As Hahn recounted in her book China to Me (1944), she was forced to give Japanese officials English lessons in return for food, and once slapped the Japanese Chief of Intelligence in the face. He came back to see her the day before she was repatriated in 1943 and slapped her back.
China to Me was an instant hit with the public. According to Roger Angell
of The New Yorker, Hahn "was, in truth, something rare: a woman deeply, almost domestically, at home in the world. Driven by curiosity and energy, she went there and did that, and then wrote about it without fuss."
, England at "Conygar", the 48 acres (194,249.3 m²) estate Boxer had inherited, and in 1948 had a second daughter, Amanda Boxer
(now a stage and television actress in London
).
Finding family life too constraining, however, in 1950 Hahn took an apartment in New York City
, and visited her husband and children from time to time in England. She continued to write articles for The New Yorker, as well as biographies of Aphra Behn
, James Brooke
, Fanny Burney
, Chiang Kai-Shek
, D. H. Lawrence
and Mabel Dodge Luhan
. According to biographer Ken Cuthbertson, while her books were favorably reviewed, "her versatility, which enabled her to write authoritatively on almost any subject, befuddled her publishers who seemed at a loss as to how to promote or market an Emily Hahn book. She did not fit into any of the usual categories" because she "moved effortlessly ... from genre to genre."
In 1978 she published Look Who's Talking, which dealt with the controversial subject of animal-human communication (her personal favorite among her non-fiction books); she wrote her last book Eve and the Apes in 1988 when she was in her eighties.
Hahn reportedly went into her office at The New Yorker daily, until just a few months before she died on February 18, 1997 at the age of 92, following complications from surgery for a shattered femur
.
"Chances are, your grandmother didn't smoke cigars and let you hold wild role-playing parties in her apartment", said her granddaughter Alfia Vecchio Wallace in her affectionate eulogy of Hahn. "Chances are that she didn't teach you Swahili
obscenities. Chances are that when she took you to the zoo, she didn't start whooping passionately at the top her lungs as you passed the gibbon
cage. Sadly for you ... your grandmother was not Emily Hahn."
In 1998, Canadian author Ken Cuthbertson published the biography Nobody Said Not to Go: The Life, Loves, and Adventures of Emily Hahn. "Nobody said not to go" was one of her characteristic phrases.
In 2005 Xiang Meili (the name given to Hahn by Sinmay) was published in China. It looks back at the life and loves of Hahn in the Shanghai of the 1930s.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist and author. Called "a forgotten American literary treasure" by The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
magazine, she was the author of 52 books and more than 180 articles and stories. Her writings in the 20th century played a significant role in opening up Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
to the west.
Early life
One of six children of a dry goods salesman and a free-thinking mother, Emily Hahn was born in St. LouisSt. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
on January 14, 1905. Nicknamed "Mickey", she moved with her family to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
when she was 15. In her memoir No Hurry to Get Home, she describes how being prevented from taking a chemistry class in which she was interested caused her to switch her course of study from English to Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
. In 1926 she was the first women to receive a degree there in Mining Engineering—despite the coolness of the administration and most of her male classmates. It was a testament to her intelligence and persistence that her lab partner grudgingly admitted, "you ain't so dumb!"
After graduation she worked briefly for an engineering company in Illinois, before traveling 2400 miles (3,862.4 km) across the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
by car with a female friend, both disguised as men, and then working as a "Harvey Girl
Fred Harvey Company
The origin of the Fred Harvey Company can be traced to the 1875 opening of two railroad eating houses located at Wallace, Kansas and Hugo, Colorado on the Kansas Pacific Railway. These cafés were opened by Fred Harvey, then a freight agent for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad...
" tour guide in New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
. Later she traveled to the Belgian Congo
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo was the formal title of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo between King Leopold II's formal relinquishment of his personal control over the state to Belgium on 15 November 1908, and Congolese independence on 30 June 1960.-Congo Free State, 1884–1908:Until the latter...
, where she worked for the Red Cross, and lived with a pygmy
Pygmy
Pygmy is a term used for various ethnic groups worldwide whose average height is unusually short; anthropologists define pygmy as any group whose adult men grow to less than 150 cm in average height. A member of a slightly taller group is termed "pygmoid." The best known pygmies are the Aka,...
tribe for two years, before crossing Central Africa
Central Africa
Central Africa is a core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda....
alone on foot.
Her first book, Seductio ad Absurdum: The Principles and Practices of Seduction
Seduction
In social science, seduction is the process of deliberately enticing a person to engage. The word seduction stems from Latin and means literally "to lead astray". As a result, the term may have a positive or negative connotation...
--A Beginner's Handbook (1930), was a tongue-in-cheek exploration of how men court women. Maxim Lieber
Maxim Lieber
Maxim Lieber was a prominent American literary agent in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s. Whittaker Chambers named him as an accomplice in 1949, and Lieber fled first to Mexico and then Poland not long after Alger Hiss's conviction in 1950.- Early years :Lieber was born in Warsaw, Poland,...
was her literary agent, 1930-1931.
China and Hong Kong
Her years in ShanghaiShanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
(from 1935 to the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941) were the most tumultuous of her life. There she became involved with prominent Shanghai figures, such as the wealthy Sir Victor Sassoon, and was in the habit of taking her pet gibbon
Gibbon
Gibbons are apes in the family Hylobatidae . The family is divided into four genera based on their diploid chromosome number: Hylobates , Hoolock , Nomascus , and Symphalangus . The extinct Bunopithecus sericus is a gibbon or gibbon-like ape which, until recently, was thought to be closely related...
, Mr. Mills, with her to dinner parties, dressed in a diaper and a minute dinner jacket.
Supporting herself as a writer for The New Yorker, she lived in an apartment in Shanghai's red light district, and became romantically involved with the Chinese poet and publisher Sinmay Zau . He gave her the entrée that enabled her to write a biography of the famous Soong sisters
Soong sisters
The Soong Sisters were three Hakka Chinese women who were, along with their husbands, amongst China's most significant political figures of the early 20th century...
, one of whom was married to Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese doctor, revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China, Sun is frequently referred to as the "Father of the Nation" , a view agreed upon by both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China...
and another to Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng in Mandarin....
.
Hahn frequently visited Sinmay's house, which was highly unconventional for a Western woman in the 1930s. The Treaty of the Bogue
Treaty of the Bogue
The Treaty of the Bogue was an agreement between China and the United Kingdom, which was concluded in October 1843 in order to supplement the previous Treaty of Nanking...
was in full effect, and Shanghai was a city divided by Chinese and Westerners at the time. Sinmay introduced her to the practice of smoking opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
, to which she became addicted
Substance use disorder
Substance use disorders include substance abuse and substance dependence. In DSM-IV, the conditions are formally diagnosed as one or the other, but it has been proposed that DSM-5 combine the two into a single condition called "Substance-use disorder"....
. She later wrote, "Though I had always wanted to be an opium addict, I can't claim that as the reason I went to China."
After moving to Hong Kong, she began an affair with Charles Boxer
C. R. Boxer
Charles Ralph Boxer FBA was a distinguished historian of Dutch and Portuguese maritime and colonial history.-Education and Military Career:...
, the local head of British army intelligence. According to a December 1944 Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
article, Hahn "decided that she needed the steadying influence of a baby, but doubted if she could have one. 'Nonsense!' said the unhappily-married Major Charles Boxer, 'I'll let you have one!' Carola Militia Boxer was born in Hong Kong on October 17, 1941".
When the Japanese marched into Hong Kong a few weeks later Boxer was imprisoned in a POW
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
camp, and Hahn was brought in for questioning. "Why?" screamed the Japanese Chief of Gendarmes, "why ... you have baby with Major Boxer?" "Because I'm a bad girl," she quipped. Fortunately for her, the Japanese respected Boxer's record of wily diplomacy.
As Hahn recounted in her book China to Me (1944), she was forced to give Japanese officials English lessons in return for food, and once slapped the Japanese Chief of Intelligence in the face. He came back to see her the day before she was repatriated in 1943 and slapped her back.
China to Me was an instant hit with the public. According to Roger Angell
Roger Angell
Roger Angell is an American essayist. He has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker and was its chief fiction editor for many years...
of The New Yorker, Hahn "was, in truth, something rare: a woman deeply, almost domestically, at home in the world. Driven by curiosity and energy, she went there and did that, and then wrote about it without fuss."
England, and return to the US
In 1945 she married Boxer who, during the time he was interned by the Japanese, had been reported by American news media to have been beheaded; their reunion—whose love story had been reported faithfully in Hahn's published letters—made headlines throughout the United States. They settled in DorsetDorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
, England at "Conygar", the 48 acres (194,249.3 m²) estate Boxer had inherited, and in 1948 had a second daughter, Amanda Boxer
Amanda Boxer
Amanda Boxer is an English actress who is best known for her television work and her performance in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot at the Almeida Theatre and The Painter by Rebecca Lenkiewicz at the Arcola Theatre....
(now a stage and television actress in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
).
Finding family life too constraining, however, in 1950 Hahn took an apartment in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and visited her husband and children from time to time in England. She continued to write articles for The New Yorker, as well as biographies of Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration and was one of the first English professional female writers. Her writing contributed to the amatory fiction genre of British literature.-Early life:...
, James Brooke
James Brooke
James, Rajah of Sarawak, KCB was the first White Rajah of Sarawak. His father, Thomas Brooke, was an English Judge Court of Appeal at Bareilly, British India; his mother, Anna Maria, born in Hertfordshire, was the illegitimate daughter of Scottish peer Colonel William Stuart, 9th Lord Blantyre,...
, Fanny Burney
Fanny Burney
Frances Burney , also known as Fanny Burney and, after her marriage, as Madame d’Arblay, was an English novelist, diarist and playwright. She was born in Lynn Regis, now King’s Lynn, England, on 13 June 1752, to musical historian Dr Charles Burney and Mrs Esther Sleepe Burney...
, Chiang Kai-Shek
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng in Mandarin....
, D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
and Mabel Dodge Luhan
Mabel Dodge Luhan
Mabel Evans Dodge Sterne Luhan , née Ganson was a wealthy American patron of the arts. She is particularly associated with the Taos art colony.-Early life:...
. According to biographer Ken Cuthbertson, while her books were favorably reviewed, "her versatility, which enabled her to write authoritatively on almost any subject, befuddled her publishers who seemed at a loss as to how to promote or market an Emily Hahn book. She did not fit into any of the usual categories" because she "moved effortlessly ... from genre to genre."
In 1978 she published Look Who's Talking, which dealt with the controversial subject of animal-human communication (her personal favorite among her non-fiction books); she wrote her last book Eve and the Apes in 1988 when she was in her eighties.
Hahn reportedly went into her office at The New Yorker daily, until just a few months before she died on February 18, 1997 at the age of 92, following complications from surgery for a shattered femur
Femur
The femur , or thigh bone, is the most proximal bone of the leg in tetrapod vertebrates capable of walking or jumping, such as most land mammals, birds, many reptiles such as lizards, and amphibians such as frogs. In vertebrates with four legs such as dogs and horses, the femur is found only in...
.
"Chances are, your grandmother didn't smoke cigars and let you hold wild role-playing parties in her apartment", said her granddaughter Alfia Vecchio Wallace in her affectionate eulogy of Hahn. "Chances are that she didn't teach you Swahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
obscenities. Chances are that when she took you to the zoo, she didn't start whooping passionately at the top her lungs as you passed the gibbon
Gibbon
Gibbons are apes in the family Hylobatidae . The family is divided into four genera based on their diploid chromosome number: Hylobates , Hoolock , Nomascus , and Symphalangus . The extinct Bunopithecus sericus is a gibbon or gibbon-like ape which, until recently, was thought to be closely related...
cage. Sadly for you ... your grandmother was not Emily Hahn."
In 1998, Canadian author Ken Cuthbertson published the biography Nobody Said Not to Go: The Life, Loves, and Adventures of Emily Hahn. "Nobody said not to go" was one of her characteristic phrases.
In 2005 Xiang Meili (the name given to Hahn by Sinmay) was published in China. It looks back at the life and loves of Hahn in the Shanghai of the 1930s.
- Seductio ad Absurdum: The Principles and Practices of Seduction—A Beginner's Handbook (1930)
- Beginner's Luck (1931)
- Congo Solo: Misadventures Two Degree North (1933)
- With Naked Foot (1934)
- Affair (1935)
- Steps of the Sun (1940)
- The Soong Sisters (1941, 1970)
- Mr. Pan (1942)
- China to Me: A Partial Autobiography (1944, 1975, 1988)
- Hong Kong Holiday (1946)
- China: A to Z (1946)
- The Picture Story of China (1946)
- Raffles of Singapore (1946)
- Miss Jill (1947) also as House in Shanghai (1958)
- England to Me (1949)
- A Degree of Prudery: A Biography of Fanny Burney (1950)
- Purple Passage: A Novel About a Lady Both Famous and Fantastic (1950) (published in the UK as Aphra Behn (1951))
- Francie (1951)
- Love Conquers Nothing: A Glandular History of Civilization (1952)
- Francie Again (1953)
- Mary, Queen of Scots (1953)
- James Brooke of Sarawak: A Biography of Sir James Brooke (1953)
- Meet the British (with Charles Roetter and Harford Thomas) (1953)
- The First Book of India (1955)
- Chiang Kai-shek: An Unauthorized Biography (1955)
- Francie Comes Home (1956)
- Spousery (1956)
- Diamond: The Spectacular Story of the Earth's Greatest Treasure and Man's Greatest Greed (1956)
- Leonardo da Vinci (1956)
- Kissing Cousins (1958)
- The Tiger House Party: The Last Days of the Maharajas (1959)
- Aboab: First Rabbi of the Americas (1959)
- Around the World With Nellie Bly (1959)
- June Finds a Way (1960)
- China Only Yesterday, 1850-1950: A Century of Change (1963)
- Indo (1963)
- Africa to Me (1964)
- Romantic Rebels: An Informal History of Bohemianism in America (1967)
- Animal Gardens (1967)
- The Cooking of China (1968)
- Recipes: Chinese Cooking (1968)
- Times and Places (1970, reissued as No Hurry to Get Home 2000)
- Breath of God: A Book About Angels, Demons, Familiars, Elementals and Spirits (1971)
- Fractured Emerald: Ireland (1971)
- On the Side of the Apes: A New look at the Primates, the Men Who Study Them and What They Have Learned (1971)
- Once Upon A Pedestal (1974)
- Lorenzo: D. H. Lawrence and the Women Who Loved Him (1975)
- Mabel: A Biography of Mabel Dodge Luhan (1977)
- Look Who's Talking! New Discoveries in Animal Communications (1978)
- Love of Gold (1980)
- The Islands: America's Imperial Adventures in the Philippines (1981)
- Eve and the Apes (1988)