Three men and three women - a plant collector, a merchant and his novelist wife, a military officer, and two famous women travelers - went to China between the Opium War and the formal end of the Opium trade, 1842-1907. Their travel records and novels became a significant source of many of the West's impressions of that far-off land.

All of the writers had a degree of contemporary importance or fame and represented different views that lent significance to their writing about China. Robert Fortune, a horticulturalist, and Archibald Little, a merchant, represent travel and the business of empire. Constance Gordon Cumming, Henry Knollys, and Isabella Bird Bishop were adventure travelers. Alicia Little, wife and novelist, helpmeet and humanitarian, was a woman of empire.

Susan Schoenbauer Thurin's study of these writings presents a rich tapestry of impressions, biases, and cultural perspectives that inform our own understanding of the Victorians and their views of the world outside their own.