author

Frank Joseph Rawlinson

1871–1937

An English-born American missionary, editor, and lecturer in China, he became known for his sympathetic interest in Chinese culture and for writing about Christianity in modern China. His life ended tragically in Shanghai in 1937 during the opening phase of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

1 Audiobook

滬語開路 = Conversational Exercises in the Shanghai Dialect

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, he moved to the United States as a young man, studied at Bucknell University and Rochester Theological Seminary, and was ordained as a Baptist minister before going to China in the early 1900s. There he worked as a missionary, teacher, and public thinker during a period of enormous political and cultural change.

He is especially remembered for his long association with The Chinese Recorder, an influential English-language journal in Shanghai, and for his lectures and writing on Christianity in China and Chinese religious culture. Archival and reference sources describe him as theologically liberal for his time and notably open to Chinese nationalism and intellectual life.

Rawlinson continued writing, lecturing, and editing into the 1930s. According to archival records, he was killed in Shanghai on August 14, 1937, during an attack in the early days of the Sino-Japanese War.