Margaret Williamson King

Margaret Williamson King (1861-1949) was a Scottish author born in Ardrossan Road, Saltcoats, Ayrshire Scotland.  She used various pen names, including Veronica King and Madge King, and with her husband, William A. Rivers.

Madge King, from a 1901 publication.
Madge King's signature, from a 1901 publication.

Early life

Margaret Alice Houston Williamson was born in Scotland, the daughter of Protestant Christian missionaries Alexander Williamson and Isabelle Dougall Williamson.[1] Her parents were from Scotland,[2] and both of them wrote books about their experiences in China.[3][4][5]

Career

Books by King included two novels, Cousin Cinderella (1892)[6] and Lord Goltho: An Apostle of Whiteness (1893). Books co-written with her husband appeared under the joint pen name "William A. Rivers", or crediting "Veronica and Paul King", and included Anglo-Chinese Sketches (1903),[7] Eurasia: A Tale of Shanghai Life (1907),[8] The Chartered Junk: A Tale of the Yangtze Valley (1910), Theodora's Stolen Family (1928), The Commissioner’s Dilemma: An International Tale of the China of Yesterday (1929)[9] and Looking Inwards (1931). She also published one of her father's journals with one of her own, as Voyaging to China in 1855 and 1904: A Contrast in Travel (1936).[10] Madge King also wrote articles about China for British publications.[11]

The Kings wrote about their travels in the United States in two critical volumes, The Raven on the Skyscraper: A Study of Modern American Portents (1925) and Under the Eagle's Feathers (1926).[12][13][14]

Personal life

Margaret Williamson (known to her family as 'Veronica') married Paul Henry King (1853-1938), a Commissioner in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, at Shanghai's Holy Trinity Cathedral in 1881.[15] They had five sons, Duncan, Paul, Wilfrid, Louis, and Patrick, and two daughters, Dulcie and Carol.[16] Their fourth son Louis Magrath King (1886-1949) married a Tibetan woman, Rinchen Lhamo, and they continued the family tradition of writing about China and Tibet.[5][17][18][19] Margaret Williamson King died in England in 1949, aged 88 years.[2]

References
  1. Timothy Richard, "In Memoriam of Rev. Alexander Williamson, LL.D." The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal (February 1901): 55.
  2. Troy J. Bassett, "Veronica King", At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1839-1901.
  3. Alexander Williamson, Journeys in North China, Manchuria, and Eastern Mongolia; with some account of Corea (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1870).
  4. Isabelle Williamson, Old Highways in China (London: The Religious Tract Society 1884).
  5. Tim Chamberlain, "Books of Change: A Western Family's Writings on China, 1855-1949" Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society China 75(1)(2013): 55-76.
  6. James Ashcroft Noble, "New Novels" The Academy (August 6, 1892): 108. via ProQuest
  7. William A. Rivers, Anglo-Chinese Sketches (Kelly and Walsh 1909).
  8. "The Bookshelf" Japan Weekly Mail (June 1, 1907): 590.
  9. Veronica King and Paul King, The Commissioner's Dilemma. An International Tale of the China of Yesterday (London 1929).
  10. King, Paul, ed. (1936). Voyaging to China in 1855 and 1904: A Contrast in Travel. London: Heath Cranton.
  11. Mrs. Paul King, "Social Life in China" The Lady's Realm (February 1901): 437-444.
  12. "Miscellaneous Works" The Australasian (February 12, 1927): 56. via Troveopen access
  13. "The United States" Sydney Morning Herald (February 5, 1927): 12. via Troveopen access
  14. A. M. Pooley, "Money the God" Evening News (December 23, 1925): 13. via Troveopen access
  15. Paul King. In The Chinese Customs Service: A Personal Record of Forty-Seven Years. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1924).
  16. Wendy Tibbitts, "Fast and Dangerous: An independent spirit in an 8-litre Bentley: Carol Mary Langton King" Dangerous Women Project (15 June 2016).
  17. [Louis Magrath King] By A Resident In Peking, China As It Really Is (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1912).
  18. Louis Magrath King. China in Turmoil. (London: Heath Cranton, 1927).
  19. Rinchen Lhamo, We Tibetans (London: Seeley, Service Co. 1926).

Further reading
  • Tim Chamberlain, "China and Tibet – Through Western Eyes" Waymarks (August 18, 2013). A blogpost about three generations of the Williamson/King family in China and Tibet, illustrated with many photographs
  • Jacqueline Young, "Western Residents of China and Their Fictional Writings, 1890-1914" (Doctoral diss., University of Glasgow, 2011).
  • Steven Ralph Hardy, "Expatriate Writers, Expatriate Readers: English-language Fiction Published Along the China Coast in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries" (Doctoral diss., University of Minnesota, 2003). Includes a chapter of Veronica and Paul King's Anglo-Chinese Sketches.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.