Isaac Taylor Headland

Born in Pennsylvania in 1859, Isaac Taylor Headland studied at Mount Union College and then at Boston University School of Theology, where he was ordained in 1890. Later that year he went to China as a missionary and educator, beginning the work that would shape both his public life and his writing.

Headland lived in Beijing for many years and became known for books that introduced Western readers to Chinese life and culture. His published works include Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes, The Chinese Boy and Girl, and Court Life in China, a widely noted book on the Qing court and the world around the Empress Dowager Cixi. Archival and library records also describe him as a teacher and collector of photographs, correspondence, and observations from daily life in China.

He died in 1942. Today, he is remembered less as a novelist than as a missionary-author whose books blended travel writing, cultural observation, and popular history, preserving a distinctive outsider's view of China at a time of major change.