Peeps at Many Lands: Japan

Peeps at Many Lands

by John Finnemore, Ella Du Cane

Peeps at Many Japan, a classical book, has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.

72 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

John Finnemore (1863-1915) was a British school teacher and writer of fictional novels and history and geography texts of countries - most are for younger readers. Finnemore contributed stories to popular boys' magazines of his time such as Boy's Own Paper and Boys' Realm but he is best remembered for his books about Teddy Lester and his friends at Slapton, a fictitious English public school. The stories have a strong sporting focus, with Lester excelling at rugby, cricket and other games. He also wrote a few adult novels.

There is no existing documentation of Finnemore's life and the following account has been constructed from returns of the Census in the United Kingdom and official Birth, Marriage and Death records held at the General Register Office (GRO) for England and Wales. John was born in the third quarter of 1863 at Birmingham, England. His father, William worked in the Birmingham pen trade and his elder brother was the artist Joseph Finnemore. John's mother, Charlotte died in 1878 when he was 15 years of age and his father did not marry again. The family must have been reasonably wealthy and as a result John received a good education because at the age of 17 he was already working as a school teacher. Five years later he married Eliza Emily Pearson who was the same age as him and was also a teacher at 17. Eliza came from a Northampton family which had resettled in Birmingham before she was 7 years of age. After her marriage Eliza dropped her first name and retained her maiden surname to become Emily Pearson Finnemore. She became an author of mainly religious works published by the Christian Knowledge Society (now known as SPCK). There were no children from the marriage.

Reviews

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay sort of bedtime read from Gutenberg. Would have been much better if the author had visited Japan himself, or known someone who had, instead of just quoting from the works of others. (BTW, Gutenberg does not provide the footnotes that are numbered in the text). Also, as a British author of his time, Finnemore spends a lot of time finding Japan and its people and customs awfully quaint (ie not like himself), without realising (or probably caring) that Japan had a rich history, culture and technology in place when his own British ancestors were painting themselves blue and practicing human sacrifice. However, reading between the lines you can glean some very interesting information, in spite of the author's very evident ethnocentricity. The Japanese invented the paper handkerchief (ie tissues) centuries before Kleenex--and that's just for starters.

Originally written for children, I wouldn't give this to a kid I loved without explaining first that the author was trying to teach British kids that their imperialist culture was way better than anything Japan (or anywhere else) had to offer.