author
Frank Joseph Rawlinson
1871–1937
An English-born American missionary in China, he became best known as the longtime editor of The Chinese Recorder in Shanghai and as a thoughtful observer of Chinese Christianity and public life. His work stood out for its sympathy toward Chinese culture and its support for Chinese nationalism.
1 Audiobook
滬語開路 = Conversational Exercises in the Shanghai Dialect
by Jay William Crofoot, Frank Joseph Rawlinson
About the author
Born in Langham, Rutland, in 1871, Frank Joseph Rawlinson moved to the United States as a young man, studied at Bucknell University, and went on to Rochester Theological Seminary. In the early 1900s he became a U.S. citizen, was ordained, and left for China as a Baptist missionary.
Rawlinson spent much of his career in Shanghai. From 1912 until his death in 1937, he edited The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal, one of the leading English-language publications of the Protestant missionary world in China. He also wrote on Chinese religious life and helped interpret the fast-changing political and cultural landscape of modern China for Western readers.
He is remembered as a liberal-minded missionary who showed unusual openness to Chinese culture and strong sympathy for Chinese nationalism. That outlook gave his writing a wider significance than missionary reporting alone, making it valuable to readers interested in religion, cross-cultural exchange, and China in the early twentieth century.