Thomas Burke’s Broken Blossoms: Stories from Limehouse Nights

Passing through London this week and so thought it might be time for a couple of London-related posts, but always with a China theme. A friend passed along a lovely cover for an edition of Thomas Burke’s Broken Blossoms. The book s presumably a reprint of Burke’s short story “The Chink and the Child” and some other related stories that featured in his famous Limehouse Nights (1916) book set in the hyper-realised Chinatown of Limehouse in the East End. Not sure what year this edition was published (the first under this title was 1920) but probably somewhat after the popular DW Griffith’s film of the “Chink and the Child” which was called Broken Blossoms and starred Lillian Gish and Richard Barthlemess (in yellow face). Broken Blossoms tells the story of young girl, Lucy Burrows, who is abused by her alcoholic prizefighting father, Battling Burrows, and meets Cheng Huan, a kindhearted Chinese man who falls in love with her. Yellow Peril for sure but Burke’s tales of Limehouse do partially reveal that now lost world.

Anyone wanting more on Burke, Broken Blossoms and Limehouse see Anne Witchard’s Thomas Burke’s Dark Chinoiserie.