Dissemination Of British Literature Via Book Ads In North-China Daily News (1868-1880)

After collecting the book ads in North-China Daily News(1868-1880)and defining the literature features of Britain and China before 1870,"5W Mode" and agenda setting theory are applied to the analysis of the literary information in the ads,and the influence of the ads upon Chinese literature in the late Qing Dynasty is tentatively discussed.There are five chapters in this paper.Chapter One is the literature review with the introduction of the studies of North-China Daily News at home and abroad,and the previous studies of the dissemination of British literature in China.There is no related study of North-China Daily News abroad,and domestic researches mostly fall into the category of history with few on the ads of North-China Daily News.And the studies of the dissemination of British literature in China are mainly from the perspectives of comparative literature and translation literature.Chapter Two is the introduction of the "5W Mode" and agenda setting theory."5W Mode" means in the process of communication there are five factors,including the communicator(Who),the message(Says What),the audience(To Whom),the medium(Through Which Channel)and the effect(With What Effect).Agenda setting theory holds the hypothesis that the medium can influence the audience's attitude towards certain items by setting up the relative agenda.Chapter Three is the discussion of literary characteristics of Britain and China before 1870.British literature before 1870 has experienced two important stages of romanticism and realism,together with the emergence of a large number of female novelists;Chinese literature before 1870 is mainly in the form of traditional poetry,and the novel writing is still peripheral in the literature field.Based on the agenda setting theory,Chapter Four is the analysis of the communicator,the author and the genre in the book ads of North-China Daily News from 1868 to 1880.Altogether,there are around 3706 book ads in North-China Daily News(1868-1880),of which Kelly & Co(Walsh)published 178 different book ads,covering around 192 British novels,and Shanghai Library published 14 different book ads,including about 105 novels;Edward Bulwer Lytton,Anthony Trollop and Wilkie Collins are the top three writers with the highest frequency in the ads;female writers Ouida(Maria Louise Ramé),Miss Braddon and George Eliot are in the top ten of the frequency in the ads;the major literature genres in North-China Daily News(1868-1880)include fiction,poetry,essay and drama together with the form of biography and anthology,etc.Chapter Five is a tentative discussion of the influence of the book ads on Chinese literature in the late Qing Dynasty.With the comparative analysis of the translated works in 1873-1875 and 1898-1911,it is noticeable that some of the English original works have been published in the ads of North-China Daily News(1868-1880).They were sold by the book seller like Kelly&Co(Walsh)or were already on the shelves of Shanghai Library in 1870s.Meanwhile,the novel concept conveyed by the original English works in the ads is different from the Chinese traditional concept.To certain extent,it is consistent with what is on the preface of the translation editions of The Pacha of Many Tales,which is published on Shen Bao(????).Accordingly,it is safe to draw a conclusion that the book ads of the original English books have prepared the conditions for the rise of the literature translation and the changes of literature concept in the late Qing Dynasty.