Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots, or Life in Korea

Underwood, Lillias H. (Lillias Horton), 1851-Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
644K words
Chapters
65

Tags

English Originals Historical GeographyDocumentary Literature Everyday LifeSocial ObservationField ObservationDocumentary NarrativeExotic CultureKorea ObservationsFolk CustomsCross-Cultural ViewMissionary PerspectiveFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots; Or, Life in Korea by Lillias H. UnderwoodAuthor: Underwood, Lillias H. (Lillias Horton), 1851-,Language: English, Class: DS: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Asia, Release Date: Dec 4, 2015

Editor's review

This book is a long account by a Western missionary woman of life on the Korean peninsula from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. "Top-Knots" in the title refers to the traditional hairstyle worn by Korean men at the time, used here to stand for local society. Its value lies in an eyewitness record of daily life, customs, the situation of women, and social change, offering primary material for understanding modern Korea and the observational habits of Western missionaries. The prose is memoir-like and rich in detail, but its stance and judgments carry a pronounced period and religious perspective, so readers should read critically. It suits readers interested in modern East Asian history, cross-cultural observation, and women's writing, and can also be read alongside academic scholarship as source fragments. Readers are advised to grasp the broad historical background first, then read by theme, distinguishing "eyewitness record" from "personal evaluation" rather than taking a single viewpoint as the whole picture.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the introduction or the author's biography and historical background before entering the main text.
  2. Take thematic notes, marking customs records separately from the author's evaluations.
  3. Read alongside other accounts of modern Korea to compare differences in observers' perspectives.
  4. Treat religious judgments with initial skepticism and evaluate them against historical sources.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
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  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
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  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
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  34. 34
  35. 35
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  37. 37
  38. 38
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  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
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  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
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FAQ

What do the Top-Knots in the title mean? They refer to the topknot worn by Korean men of the time, a traditional hairstyle. The author uses this outward feature to stand for local people and society, so the title bears the mark of its era; readers may note the observational stance behind such expressions.
Is this an objective historical work? It is not a work of strict historiography but an eyewitness memoir. It offers abundant detail of daily life but is interwoven with missionary stance and period prejudice; it is best used as source fragments and compared with academic research.
Is the original English edition difficult to read? The text is late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century English, with long sentences and some archaic vocabulary. Readers are advised to read the beginnings and ends of chapters to grasp the main thread, infer unfamiliar words from context, and not read sentence by sentence.

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About the author

Underwood, Lillias H. (Lillias Horton), 1851- Author · American · 1851

Lillias H. Underwood (born 1851), often referred to in Chinese as Andewude, was an American woman physician and missionary who worked in Korea in medical care and women's education. Public information about her early life and education is limited, but her identity and activities place her among the Western women who went to East Asia in the modern era to engage in medical missionary work and education. Drawing on her own experience, her book Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots Or, Life in Korea is based on fifteen years of life in Korea and records local customs, the situation of women, and medical and educational activities. Combining the perspectives of observer and participant, its plain and concrete narrative offered contemporary English readers a window into Korea and left later generations a useful source for studying modern Korean society and Western missionary activity.