On February 11th scholar Tess Johnston, author of fifteen volumes on the history of Shanghai, delivered a talk about the city’s immigration waves in the early to mid-twentieth century as part of Hoover L&A’s History and Policy Lecture Series. Johnston is the author of A Lost Look and fourteen other books describing western architecture in China, as well as an autobiography, Permanently Temporary, that describes her lifetime of travel. Originally from Virginia, Johnston ventured to Shanghai in 1981 to work at the American Consulate General and in 1996, after over thirty years in the diplomatic service, she retired and stayed on to research, write, and lecture. As she has decided to repatriate this year to Washington, DC, Johnston is donating her archive to Hoover Library & Archives. Her archive consists of the extensive library and collection of historical documents that have informed her long career as a scholar and author. Her documents and writings about the history of western immigration, art, and architecture in Shanghai will complement the rich holdings on modern China in Hoover’s collections, which include the Chiang Kai-shek , Chen Bulei, and Joseph Stilwell diaries, as well as the T.V. Soong and Nym Wales collections.
