SOURCE: "Ernest Braman on China: An Important Letter," in PMLA, Vol. 87, No. 3, May, 1972, pp. 511-13.

In the following essay, White presents a letter from Bramah to his publisher, Grant Richards, that proves the author of The Wallet of Kai Lung and several other books set in China never visited the Far East.

If Ernest Bramah, born Ernest Bramah Smith (1868-1942), is to find a place in English literary history, it will be for his Kai Lung tales, centered on this Chinese storyteller and "philosopher" in The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900), Kai Lung's Golden Hours (1922), Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (1928), The Moon of Much Gladness, Related by Kai Lung (1932, called, in America, The Return of Kai Lung), and Kai Lung Beneath the Mul-berry-Tree (1940). The pattern in all of them is pretty much the same: Kai Lung, finding himself among thieves, rogues, and mandarins, is accused of many crimes but...