author
Hugh Leigh Norris
A Royal Navy surgeon who turned his years in China into fiction, he wrote lively stories that mix travel, observation, and entertainment. His work offers a period glimpse of cross-cultural encounters as seen through an early-20th-century British lens.
1 Audiobook
Rice Papers
by Hugh Leigh Norris
About the author
Hugh Leigh Norris was a British naval medical officer and author. Contemporary library and reference pages identify him as both a writer and a Royal Navy medical man, and his surviving reputation now rests mainly on Rice Papers.
That book was published in 1905 and, in its original preface, Norris says the stories were written during three years of service in China. He presents them as fictional pieces meant to entertain, while also trying to show Chinese characters differently from the stage stereotypes common in his time.
Other biographical notes describe him as a contributor to journals including Punch, and as the author of another book, China Side. He is also remembered in naval memorial records as Fleet Surgeon Hugh Leigh Norris, who died in 1916.