| Andrew Gosling worked for the National Library
of Australia from 1973 to 2003, including four years in Southeast Asia.
He was Chief Librarian in Asian Collections from 1985 to 2003. Since
2004 he has been undertaking Asian bibliographic projects for the
Library, with funding from the Harold S. Williams Trust. |
|
During 2006 I have been preparing a guide to the McLaren-Human
Collection of old and rare Korean books held at the National Library of
Australia. It is intended that the completed guide will be made
available on the library's website. In this brief report I will provide
background on the collector, Jessie McLaren and her daughter Rachel
McLaren (later Rachel Human) who donated the books to the National
Library, as well as giving an outline of the collection and why the
task of writing the guide has been both fascinating and challenging.
Australia's engagement with Asia did not suddenly start after the
Second World War as some seem to think. In Korea, for example,
Australian missionaries were active from the late 1880s, and many such
as the McLarens spent half a lifetime working there. Along with
Americans, Canadians and local believers they helped "to produce in
Korea a Christian growth and socio-political influence unparallelled in
East Asia." as Professor Ken Wells of the ANU has written.
Despite Korea's official ban on Christianity and quite recent
persecution of Catholics, Protestant missionaries began to enter the
country from 1884 onwards. The first Australian missionary was Henry
Davies, former missionary in India and founding headmaster of Caulfield
Grammar School, Melbourne. Davies reached Korea in October 1889. He
walked from village to village distributing religious books. Falling
ill with smallpox and pneumonia, he died after only six months.
Nevertheless, his example inspired others. Australian Presbyterian
missionaries became active in the south-eastern corner of the peninsula
around Pusan.
Jessie McLaren (1883-1968) was born in Tasmania, the second daughter of
Charles and Annie Reeve. Her father, Charles Reeve, founded the Poona
and Indian Village Mission in India during the 1890s. Jessie obtained a
Master of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne, where she
majored in philosophy. After graduation she became a travelling
secretary for the Student Christian Movement in Australia and New
Zealand. She intended to join her father at his Indian mission, but her
plans changed when she met Charles Inglis McLaren (1882-1957). Charles
and Jessie had similar missionary backgrounds. He had been born in
Japan, son of the Presbyterian missionary and educationalist, Samuel
Gilfillan McLaren (1840-1914). In 1886 the family moved to Melbourne,
where Samuel was the well-respected principal of Presbyterian Ladies'
College for many years.
Charles studied medicine, and like Jessie, was active in the Student
Christian Movement. Jessie and Charles married in Melbourne on 22
August 1911. In September, as missionaries of the Presbyterian Church
of Victoria, they sailed to Korea. From 1911 to 1923 Charles McLaren
was at Paton Memorial Hospital, Chinju, in the far south-east of Korea.
Charles and Jessie McLaren were in Seoul from 1923 to 1939. Charles
became professor of neurology and psychological medicine at Severance
Union Medical College, which later became the medical faculty at Yonsei
University. As war approached, Jessie and Rachel left for Australia in
March 1941. After Pearl Harbour in December, Charles was imprisoned by
the Japanese first in Korea, then moved to Japan and finally
repatriated via neutral Portuguese East Africa late in 1942
Jessie McLaren had a particular interest in advancing the status of
Korean women. In her very early days in Korea she had established a
kindergarten and a night school in order to offer opportunities to
women and children. Later, after they moved to Seoul, she taught at
Ewha College, now one of Asia's most prestigious women's universities.
Having studied history and philosophy at school and university, she
lectured there in history as well as Bible studies. She was also
responsible for the layout of the new college grounds, its flowerbeds,
trees and lawns. Her love of gardening is obvious from her book
collection, especially the many Japanese titles on Korean and other
East Asian botany
In February 1923 their daughter Rachel Reeve McLaren was born. As
Rachel wrote many years later " Korea was my home; I was born there; I
lived there until the age of eighteen; I spoke Korean before English; I
had three Korean "sisters", whom my parents had fostered and educated
and whom I firmly believed during my childhood to be my real sisters."
During her second decade in Korea, Jessie became seriously ill with a
heart condition and was house-bound for a long period. "It was
characteristic of her that instead of fretting over what could have
been regarded as an imprisonment, she used the time to dig deep into
Korean history and culture", her daughter recalled . She improved her
knowledge of Chinese, the written language of educated Koreans up the
20th century.
The McLaren-Human Collection at the National Library contains only some
of the books Jessie McLaren acquired in Korea between 1911 and 1941.
Rachel wrote, "my mother became interested in many aspects of Korean
culture, and collected much material, a small proportion of which she
brought back with her to Australia during the [Second World] War."
After Jessie's death in 1968, Rachel placed 25 of the most valuable
Korean books, as well as 4 titles from China, on loan at the Australian
National University Library. This was for safekeeping, while she
decided on a permanent home for the collection, either in Korea or
Australia. In 1983 she decided to keep her mother's books together in
Australia, and donate them to the National Library.
The core of the Collection consists of 81 titles mostly from Korea. A
few date back to the 16th and 17th centuries. These books have been
kept together in the Library's Asian Collections and identified by the
call number prefix OKM. The guide will provide details on the authors,
contents and significance of the 81 OKM items. This information will
also be added to the catalogue records for the OKM items to enhance
searching. Two appendices will list the 44 Japanese titles and 11 books
from China also acquired by Jessie McLaren and donated to the Library
by her daughter. They have been integrated into the Japanese and
Chinese collections respectively.
The donation of the McLaren-Human Collection provided the National
Library with the most significant repository of older Korean imprints
in Australia. According to Professor Wells "The NLA Korean collection
remains the largest in the southern hemisphere, larger than any single
holding in Europe", but it consists mainly of post-1945 texts from the
Republic of Korea and to a lesser extent the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea. The Australian universities which acquire Korean
material have smaller but similarly contemporary collections.
The OKM titles cover a wide range of subjects from Korean history and
literature to philosophy and religion; from dictionaries and grammars
to geography and cooking. Jessie McLaren acquired old and rare
editions, as well as reprints issued in Korea during the Japanese
colonial period, between 1910 and 1941 when she left the country. Most
but by no means all the books relate to Korea's pre-twentieth century
history and culture.
One of the main challenges with the guide has been language. The
McLaren-Human Collection is a multi-lingual, multi-script resource,
which does not fit easily into categories by language or place of
publication. The OKM books, the core of the collection, are mainly
older and reprint titles in the classical Chinese which was the main
written language of educated Koreans up to modern times. Some titles
are wholly or partly in the Korean alphabetic script, now known as
han'gul. A few books include some Japanese text and a number are partly
in English or other Western languages. The Japanese component of the
collection includes books in Japanese published in Japan or Korea while
it was under Japanese rule as well as Western language works by
Japanese authors. The books from China are mainly dictionaries and
grammars Jessie McLaren would have used in her study of the Chinese
language.
When Jessie McLaren was translating "Tonggyong chapki", an historical
miscellany about Korea's ancient capital, Kyongju, she wrote "as
fitness for the task I can only plead ¡ a certain
acquaintance with my native tongue, small Korean and less Chinese."
Echoing her words I am able to claim a certain acquaintance with my
native tongue, small Chinese, and until I started the guide virtually
no Korean. However I have been fortunate to have the help of others
with vastly more knowledge of Korean language, history and culture.
Jung-Hee Fry, the former Korean Librarian at the National Library was
involved in acquiring the McLaren-Human Collection together with the
late Sidney Wang, Chief Librarian, Orientalia. She produced a listing
of the collection and later fully catalogued all the OKM titles. Her
successor Jung-Ok Park has been most helpful in searching Korean
language reference sources for the guide.
I have also been receiving considerable help from scholars in Korean
studies, particularly Dr John Jorgensen of Griffith University,
Queensland and Professor Ross King of the University of British
Columbia, Canada. Recently I have also been in touch with Rachel Human
and her family in Melbourne, and they have kindly said they will
provide additional information about Jessie McLaren and her collection.
Scholarly assistance is particularly valuable for ascertaining the
dating and rarity of the titles. The Korean books published during the
Japanese colonial period are clearly dated as are the 19th and 20th
century works on Korean language and culture by Western missionaries.
Some older titles have reign period dates but not all. Several titles
have been identified as being rare or very rare, as for example the
three titles described below. One of the rarest items is the apocryphal
Buddhist sutra "Pumo unjunnggyong" ("Fu mu en zhong jing" in Chinese)
or "Sutra on the profound kindness of parents." This extremely rare
18th century illustrated edition in Chinese and Korean scripts held at
OKM no.9 was published in the remote far north-east of Korea. The
National Library is now digitizing this book and making it available on
its website.
I will conclude this report with a few examples from the draft of the
guide. The final form of these entries may vary a little from the text
below.
OKM no.5 Author: Kim, Man-jung. 金萬重, 1637-1692. Title: 九雲夢. Publisher: [S.l : s.n., 1803] Description: 3 v. ; 28 cm. Notes: Caption title. Printed on double leaves, oriental style. Text in classical Chinese. A major work of traditional Korean fiction written in about 1687 by the Korean government official and writer Kim Man-jung, this is a rare early 19th century edition in 3 volumes. The title is known in English as "A nine cloud dream." It is historical fiction set in 9th century Tang dynasty China. It tells of a young Buddhist monk who dreams that he is reborn to worldly success and marriage to 8 women in succession, only to wake up and find he is still a young Buddhist monk. The National Library also holds several recent editions including a 1973 edition of Kuunmong in Korean and English at OK 5973.13 8496 and an English translation in "Virtuous women : three masterpieces of traditional Korean fiction", published by the Korean National Commission for Unesco and held at YY 895.73208 V819vi. OKM no.36 Title: Kajae yonhaengnok (chon). 稼齋燕行錄 (全) Publisher: 京城 : 朝鮮古書刊行會, 大正 3 [1914] Series: 朝鮮群書大系. 續 ; 第7輯. Description: 1, 354 p. ; 23 cm. Notes: Text in classical Chinese. This is a rare reprint edition of a travel diary by Kim Ch'ang-op (1658-1721). Kim was attached to the Korean mission to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) court at Beijing in 1712-1713. Korea sent annual missions of 300 or so people to China as a vassal state offering compliments to the emperor on New Year's Day, which was conventionally regarded as his birthday. The ruler of China at the time was the great Kangxi emperor (1654-1722) who was on the throne for more than 60 years. Kim Ch'ang-op was a member of a prominent family. His elder brother Kim Chang-jip (1648-1722) served as Korean prime minister. OKM no.54 Title: Son-Yong taejo taehak. 鮮英對照大學 = The great learning / translated by James S. Gale. Publisher: 京城 : 朝鮮耶蘇敎書會, 大正 13 [1924] Description: 1, 20, 11 p. ; 21 cm. This is a very rare edition of the Great Learning in the original Chinese with Korean and English translations. It was published by the Christian Literature Society of Korea. The Great Learning (Da xue in Chinese and Taehak in Korean) is a brief work on the essence of Confucian humanist ethics and government, which was highly influential in traditional Korea. It is one of the Four Books, four basic texts of Confucianism (see under OKM no.51). In fact it is a chapter from a longer work, the Record of Rituals (Li ji in Chinese and Yegi in Korean). The Record of Rituals was compiled during China's Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) and is a disparate collection of earlier Confucian and other writings.The Library holds several other editions of the Great Learning from Korea including OKM no. 55 and 79. The translator of OKM no.54 is James Scarth Gale (1863-1937) a Canadian Presbyterian missionary who was in Korea between 1884 and 1927. During this period he was the leading interpreter of Korean culture to the West. The McLaren-Human Collection includes several other works by Gale including dictionaries and books about the Korean language (OKM no.58, 68, 69, 74, 81 and 83). The Library also holds his "History of the Korean people" at YY 951.9 G151-2, "Korean sketches" at YY 951.902 G151 and other titles. Revised 24 November 2006 |