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Imperial Masquerade
Daughter of a Manchu aristocrat, granddaughter of a Boston merchant, educated like a boy in the Confucian classics, a baptized Catholic blessed by the hand of Pope Leo XIII, a woman who donned chic Western fashions in China and her ceremonial court robes in the United States, and wife of an American soldier of fortune, Princess Der Ling was a fascinating human battleground of warring identities. Imperial Masquerade is the first biography of one of the twentieth-century's most intriguing cross-cultural personalities. It traces not only the life of Princess Der Ling, but offers a fresh look at the woman she lionized and, ultimately, betrayed - the Empress Dowager Cixi.
"The last years of the Qing dynasty were a time of rumours, adventures, and mysterious opportunities for the polyglot inhabitants of Beijing. The Memoir written in 1911 by the self-styled 'Princess' Der Ling, lady-in-waiting to the Empress Dowager between 1903 and 1905, has always presented baffling problems concerning accuracy and interpretation. Imperial Masquerade is an ingenious rethinking of the available evidence, and presents an absorbing account of how Der Ling survived at Court, and what it must have been like to work for such a formidable ruler."; -Jonathan Spence, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University, author of Return To Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man
"An intriguing, insightful portrait of a woman born at the boundary between two cultures who, in her restless yearning for celebrity, crossed and re-crossed another boundary-that between reality and fantasy-in an extraordinary life that took her from the Forbidden City of Beijing to the pleasure palaces of America's Jazz Age."; -Diana Preston, author of The Boxer Rebellion
"This is a fine book, full of historical surprises. Grant Hayter-Menzies has taken a strange and much-abused figure and brought her back to life with grace and flair. He shows that 'Princess' Der Ling really was a lady-in-waiting to China's Empress Dowager Tzu-Hsi, and really was a member of the Manchu nobility. Outside China, the real Der Ling led a fabulous life as a diplomat's daughter in Paris, in the company of world-famous celebrities, and then ended in tragedy in America, as sympathetically reconstructed in this charming book."; -Sterling Seagrave, author of Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China.
A resident of Sidney, British Columbia, Grant Hayter-Menzies has served as art and music critic for newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and Canada. His first book, a biography of stage and screen comedienne Charlotte Greenwood, based on her unpublished memoirs, was published in May 2007 by McFarland & Company. He will be available for events in the U.S., Canada and China after the book's publication in January.
"The last years of the Qing dynasty were a time of rumours, adventures, and mysterious opportunities for the polyglot inhabitants of Beijing. The Memoir written in 1911 by the self-styled 'Princess' Der Ling, lady-in-waiting to the Empress Dowager between 1903 and 1905, has always presented baffling problems concerning accuracy and interpretation. Imperial Masquerade is an ingenious rethinking of the available evidence, and presents an absorbing account of how Der Ling survived at Court, and what it must have been like to work for such a formidable ruler."; -Jonathan Spence, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University, author of Return To Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man
"An intriguing, insightful portrait of a woman born at the boundary between two cultures who, in her restless yearning for celebrity, crossed and re-crossed another boundary-that between reality and fantasy-in an extraordinary life that took her from the Forbidden City of Beijing to the pleasure palaces of America's Jazz Age."; -Diana Preston, author of The Boxer Rebellion
"This is a fine book, full of historical surprises. Grant Hayter-Menzies has taken a strange and much-abused figure and brought her back to life with grace and flair. He shows that 'Princess' Der Ling really was a lady-in-waiting to China's Empress Dowager Tzu-Hsi, and really was a member of the Manchu nobility. Outside China, the real Der Ling led a fabulous life as a diplomat's daughter in Paris, in the company of world-famous celebrities, and then ended in tragedy in America, as sympathetically reconstructed in this charming book."; -Sterling Seagrave, author of Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China.
A resident of Sidney, British Columbia, Grant Hayter-Menzies has served as art and music critic for newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and Canada. His first book, a biography of stage and screen comedienne Charlotte Greenwood, based on her unpublished memoirs, was published in May 2007 by McFarland & Company. He will be available for events in the U.S., Canada and China after the book's publication in January.
Submitted on March 21, 2008 in By David.
