Julia Lovell
Julia Lovell FBA (born 1975) is a British scholar, author, and translator whose non-fiction books focus on China.
Life and career
[edit]Lovell is professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, where her research has been focused principally on the relationship between culture (specifically, literature, architecture, historiography and sport) and modern Chinese nation-building.[1]
Lovell's books include The Politics of Cultural Capital: China's Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature (University of Hawaii Press, 2006); The Great Wall: China Against the World 1000 BC – AD 2000 (Atlantic Books, 2006);[2] and The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (Picador, 2011).
Lovell is also a literary translator; her translations include works by Lu Xun, Han Shaogong, Eileen Chang and Zhu Wen. Zhu Wen's book I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China, which Lovell translated, was a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize in 2008.[3] Her book The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China won the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature. It was the first non-fiction book to win the prize.[4]
She was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2010 in the category of Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern History. These prizes are given to young scholars who have made a significant contribution to their field.[5]
Lovell has written articles about China for The Guardian, The Times, The Economist and The Times Literary Supplement.[6]
She is married to author Robert Macfarlane.[7]
Reception
[edit]Lovell's book The Opium Wars: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China was widely reviewed in both scholarly journals and the press. Matthew W. Mosca, writing in the Journal of Asian Studies, wrote that the Opium War had "once ranked among the most studied events in Chinese history", but interest had notably declined. Lovell, he said, suggested that there were still holes in English language coverage and that Chinese scholarly and popular interest in the war has, if anything, grown. Lovell, he concludes, "is certainly correct that the Opium War, as an event in the round, has been curiously neglected in Western scholarship" and hers is "the only book-length general history of the conflict in English by an author directly consulting both Chinese and Western sources." He noted that the book devoted much space to explaining how 20th-century politics, especially under the Nationalist Party government of Chiang Kai-shek, used these events to build patriotic sentiment.[8]
Oxford University professor Rana Mitter wrote in The Guardian that Lovell's book "is part of a trend in understanding the British empire and China's role in it," and that the "sense of an unfolding tragedy, explicable but inexorable, runs through the book, making it a gripping read as well as an important one."[9] A reviewer in The Economist commented: "Julia Lovell's excellent new book explores why this period of history is so emotionally important for the Chinese" and "more importantly” explains “how China turned the Opium Wars into a founding myth of its struggle for modernity."[10]
Jeffrey Wasserstrom wrote in Time that Lovell's translation of the works of Lu Xun "could be considered the most significant Penguin Classic ever published."[11]
Awards and honours
[edit]- 2010 Philip Leverhulme Prize[5][12]
- 2012 Jan Michalski Prize, winner, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China[4][13]
- 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize, shortlisted[14]
- 2019 elected Fellow of the British Academy[15]
- 2019 Cundill History Prize, winner, Maoism[16]
Selected works
[edit]- Lovell, Julia (2006). The Politics of Cultural Capital: China's Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 9780824829629.
- —— (2006). The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC – AD 2000. New York; Berkeley, Calif.: Grove Press. ISBN 9780802118141.
- —— (2011). The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China. London: Picador. ISBN 9780330537858.
- —— (2019). Maoism: A Global History. New York: Knopf. ISBN 9780525656043.
Translations
[edit]- Han, Shaogong (2003). A Dictionary of Maqiao. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231127448.
- Zhu, Wen (2007). I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231136945.
- Zhang, Ailing (2007). Lust, Caution: The Story. New York: Anchor Books. ISBN 9780307387448.
- Yan, Lianke (2007). Serve the People!. New York, NY: Black Cat. ISBN 9780802170446.
- Lu, Xun (2009). The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun. London; New York: Penguin. ISBN 9780140455489.
- Monkey King: Journey to the West. New York: Penguin. 2021. ISBN 9780143107187. Translation of selected chapters of the 16th century novel Xiyou Ji into lively contemporary English, with an extensive Introduction by Lovell and a Preface by Gene Luen Yang.[17][18][19]
References
[edit]- ^ "Professor Julia Lovell — Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London". Birkbeck, University of London. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
- ^ Abrahamsen, Eric (22 October 2015). "Julia Lovell". Paper-republic.org. Retrieved 13 June 2016.
- ^ "Finalists". The Kiriyama Prize. Archived from the original on 18 June 2011. Retrieved 2 February 2011.
- ^ a b "The Jan Michalski Prize for Literature 2012".
- ^ a b "Awards made in 2010" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
- ^ "Penguin Classics". Penguin Classics. Retrieved 13 June 2016.
- ^ Grey, Tobias (28 May 2019). "Robert Macfarlane and the Dark Side of Nature Writing (Published 2019)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 7 October 2020.
- ^ Mosca, Matthew W. (2015). "The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China. By Julia Lovell". The Journal of Asian Studies. 74 (2): 472–474. doi:10.1017/S0021911815000212. S2CID 163366425.
- ^ Mitter, Rana (2 September 2011). "The Opium War (A review)". The Guardian.
- ^ "Be Careful What you Wish For". The Economist. 29 October 2011.
- ^ "China's Orwell". Time. 7 December 2009. p. 174.
- ^ "Dr Julia Lovell". University of London website. Retrieved 9 August 2015.
- ^ "Le Prix Jan Michalski 2012 attribué à Julia Lovell". Le Temps (in French). 22 November 2012. Retrieved 23 November 2012.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction shortlist revealed | The Bookseller". www.thebookseller.com. Retrieved 23 October 2019.
- ^ "New Fellows 2019" (PDF). The British Academy. Retrieved 8 November 2019.
- ^ "British scholar Julia Lovell wins McGill-run history prize for book on Maoism". www.citynews1130.com. 15 November 2019. Retrieved 15 November 2019.
- ^ Van Fleet, John Darwin (31 January 2021). "Monkey King (Review)". Asian Review of Books. Retrieved 18 February 2021.
- ^ Wasserstrom, Jeffrey (10 December 2020). "Julia Lovell on the Monkey King's Travels Across Borders: A Conversation". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 18 February 2021.
- ^ Review my Minjie Chen, 'A Chinese Classic Journeys to the West: Julia Lovell’s Translation of “Monkey King”' in the Los Angeles Review of Books , 5 Oct 2021 https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-chinese-classic-journeys-to-the-west-julia-lovells-translation-of-monkey-king/ Retrieved 5 Oct 2021
External links
[edit]- Interview with Julia Lovell, Paper Republic.
- "Julia Lovell's Lu Xun," Danwei.
- Julia Lovell, "Beijing Values the Nobels: That's Why This Hurts."
- Kiriyama Prize Finalists Archived 18 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine.
- Yang Guang, "Establishing a Bond with Chinese writing," China Daily (July 30, 2010).
