WORLD WAR II.

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Dang dai wenxian ("Current Documentary Literature"). Second editions of these anthologies, uncommon in any printing or edition, of bilingual Engish-Chinese materials printed for language learners in China during the mid-1940s, taking as their subjects speeches, treaties, and declarations issued by the Allies during the Second World War, including addresses by Winston Churchill, FDR, and Chiang Kai-shek.Together, these two volumes reproduce 88 texts, the English and Chinese versions in adjacent columns. Each is followed by notes and annotations, and sometimes by quotes of interest by Mark Twain, William Blake, and other literary figures. Frequent errors in the text emphasize the stretched socio-economic circumstances in which these materials were produced.The texts were first issued in individual instalments, before the China Culture Service decided to compile them into anthologies. Following the Maoist victory in 1949, much Second World War-related content became politically problematic, ensuring that both the instalments and the anthologies are now hard to come by. We have traced various holdings at just six institutions in the US as well as at the National Library of China.

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