The Unexpurgated Diary of a Shanghai Baby

This wonderful book is written as the diary of a one-year-old baby in an American expat household in Shanghai in the early 1920s. The world of old Shanghai, the life of expats in Asia - it is all reflected here through the eyes of the baby. Elsie McCormick, an American resident of Shanghai, nails the feel of the times with humor and insight.

Ms McCormick was an American, and in 1916, while studying at the University of California in Berkeley, she was a person who was capable of producing delightful satirical barbs, a skill she was to make full use of in the Unexpurgated Diary of a Shanghai Baby. In 1923, Elsie published a book called Audacious Angles on China, which sold well and included the first version of the Unexpurgated Diary of a Shanghai Baby. A third edition of the Unexpurgated Diary was subsequently published as a stand-alone in Shanghai by the Chinese American Publishing Co in 1927. By the 1930s, Elsie was writing from the United States for the New Yorker magazine, which is all the confirmation that anyone needs of the quality of a writer’s work.