Douglas Kerr
Biographic Data
| ID | 3967892 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Douglas Kerr |
| GIVEN NAMES | Douglas |
| FAMILY NAME | Kerr |
| SIGNATURE | KERR D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1155-7328 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1950 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Norval Morris, George Orwell, and Parables of the Law
Norval Morris’s The Brothel Boy and Other Parables of the Law is a collection of fictional stories ostensibly narrated by Eric Blair, a young policeman in colonial Burma in the 1920s, who would later become the political writer George Orwell. They are intended as parables, to illustrate moral and ethical issues in legal practice, by the “case method”. This essay examines Morris’s use of fictional stories, featuring an actual historical person and…
Arthur Conan Doyle, Eugenics, and the Hand of God
The lifetime of Arthur Conan Doyle coincided with the development of eugenics and its establishment as a powerful presence in some of the leading institutions, and minds, of the time. The discourse of eugenics was an important part of both the literary and scientific culture to which he belonged and contributed. His involvement with it, throughout his working life, shows the attraction of eugenics to a man of letters with a lifelong interest in m…
Orwell and Empire: A Conversation with Douglas Kerr
Contemporary readers are most familiar with George Orwell's later works of political satire, such as Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Less known is the fact that the writer, who is often considered the epitome of ‘Englishness’, was born in India and as a young man served for five years in the Imperial Police in Burma—an experience that reverberated throughout his oeuvre. In Orwell and Empire (Oxford University Press, 2022), Dou…
Conan Doyle: Man of Letters, Man About Town
This essay attempts to deduce Conan Doyle’s map of London from the writings of his long career and particularly his autobiography Memories and Adventures (1924). Here we can find a portrait of the layers of late-Victorian London: the historic centre of government, business, and the great institutions of national culture, the old working-class areas that surround it, and the new suburbs sprawling in every direction. In magazine and publishing offi…
Conrad and the Comic Turn
Of his nineteen years as a sailor , from 1874 to 1894, Joseph Conrad actually worked on ships for ten years and eight months, of which just over eight years were spent at sea, including nine months as a passenger (Najder 161–62). During these nomadic years, London was the place to which he returned again and again to seek his next berth, staying in a series of sailors’ homes, lodgings, and boarding houses. How did he spend his time, a single man …
The Straight Left: Sport and the Nation in Arthur Conan Doyle
In the last years of the nineteenth century, Arthur Conan Doyle, a prolific writer with a global reputation and readership, was settled with his family at Hindhead in Surrey. In his Memories and Adventures ( M&A ) he was to recall this period as an interlude of peace: “The country was lovely. My life was filled with alternate work and sport. As with me so with the nation” (151). This last sentence refers chiefly to the apparent placidity of the t…
Eastern Figures: Orient and empire in British writing
Eastern Figures is a literary history with a difference. It examines British writing about the East – centred on India but radiating as far as Egypt and the Pacific – in the colonial and postcolonial period. It takes as its subject 'the East' that was real to the British imagination, largely the creation of writers who described and told stories about it, descriptions and stories coloured by the experience of empire and its aftermath. \n \nIt is …
A Century of Travels in China: Critical Essays on Travel Writing from the 1840s to the 1940s
Writings of travelers have shaped ideas about an evolving China, while preconceived ideas about China also shaped the way they saw the country. A Century of Travels in China explores the impressions of these writers on various themes, from Chinese cities and landscapes to the work of Europeans abroad. From the time of the first Opium War to the declaration of the People’s Republic, China’s history has been one of extraordinary change and stubborn…
Timothy Mo’s Man Sundae, and Other Overseas Workers
A Passage to Kowloon Tong: Paul Theroux and Hong Kong 1997
Colonial habitats: Orwell and woolf in the jungle
Wilfred Owen's Voices: Language and Community
Forensic Medicine
Forensic Medicine
Wilfred Owen's Voices: Language and Community
Colonial habitats: Orwell and woolf in the jungle
A Passage to Kowloon Tong: Paul Theroux and Hong Kong 1997
Timothy Mo’s Man Sundae, and Other Overseas Workers
A Century of Travels in China: Critical Essays on Travel Writing from the 1840s to the 1940s
Writings of travelers have shaped ideas about an evolving China, while preconceived ideas about China also shaped the way they saw the country. A Century of Travels in China explores the impressions of these writers on various themes, from Chinese cities and landscapes to the work of Europeans abroad. From the time of the first Opium War to the declaration of the People’s Republic, China’s history has been one of extraordinary change and stubborn…
Eastern Figures: Orient and empire in British writing
Eastern Figures is a literary history with a difference. It examines British writing about the East – centred on India but radiating as far as Egypt and the Pacific – in the colonial and postcolonial period. It takes as its subject 'the East' that was real to the British imagination, largely the creation of writers who described and told stories about it, descriptions and stories coloured by the experience of empire and its aftermath. \n \nIt is …
The Straight Left: Sport and the Nation in Arthur Conan Doyle
In the last years of the nineteenth century, Arthur Conan Doyle, a prolific writer with a global reputation and readership, was settled with his family at Hindhead in Surrey. In his Memories and Adventures ( M&A ) he was to recall this period as an interlude of peace: “The country was lovely. My life was filled with alternate work and sport. As with me so with the nation” (151). This last sentence refers chiefly to the apparent placidity of the t…
Conrad and the Comic Turn
Of his nineteen years as a sailor , from 1874 to 1894, Joseph Conrad actually worked on ships for ten years and eight months, of which just over eight years were spent at sea, including nine months as a passenger (Najder 161–62). During these nomadic years, London was the place to which he returned again and again to seek his next berth, staying in a series of sailors’ homes, lodgings, and boarding houses. How did he spend his time, a single man …
Conan Doyle: Man of Letters, Man About Town
This essay attempts to deduce Conan Doyle’s map of London from the writings of his long career and particularly his autobiography Memories and Adventures (1924). Here we can find a portrait of the layers of late-Victorian London: the historic centre of government, business, and the great institutions of national culture, the old working-class areas that surround it, and the new suburbs sprawling in every direction. In magazine and publishing offi…
Orwell and Empire: A Conversation with Douglas Kerr
Contemporary readers are most familiar with George Orwell's later works of political satire, such as Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Less known is the fact that the writer, who is often considered the epitome of ‘Englishness’, was born in India and as a young man served for five years in the Imperial Police in Burma—an experience that reverberated throughout his oeuvre. In Orwell and Empire (Oxford University Press, 2022), Dou…
Arthur Conan Doyle, Eugenics, and the Hand of God
The lifetime of Arthur Conan Doyle coincided with the development of eugenics and its establishment as a powerful presence in some of the leading institutions, and minds, of the time. The discourse of eugenics was an important part of both the literary and scientific culture to which he belonged and contributed. His involvement with it, throughout his working life, shows the attraction of eugenics to a man of letters with a lifelong interest in m…
Norval Morris, George Orwell, and Parables of the Law
Norval Morris’s The Brothel Boy and Other Parables of the Law is a collection of fictional stories ostensibly narrated by Eric Blair, a young policeman in colonial Burma in the 1920s, who would later become the political writer George Orwell. They are intended as parables, to illustrate moral and ethical issues in legal practice, by the “case method”. This essay examines Morris’s use of fictional stories, featuring an actual historical person and…
History (10 works) · Art (7 works) · History (7 works) · Literature (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Adventure (3 works) · Ancient history (3 works) · Archaeology (3 works) · Art history (3 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (3 works)