Book of Interest: Eastern Shame Girl

I was learning what translations there were of traditional Chinese stories when I came across a volume called Eastern Shame Girl:

Frontispiece

This gorgeous first edition is even signed by an owner who shares my hometown:

John B. Hawley, Ft. Worth, Texas, 1937 (remember  fountain pens with metal nibs!)

Perhaps most striking is an illustration to the title story, "Eastern Shame Girl:"

Gorgeous and attractive line drawing of Miss Du

The subject of course, is Du Shiniang, and this story is much more familiarly known as "The Courtesan's Jewel-Box," after the translation of Gladys Yang and Yang Xianyi.

A different edition with fewer pages carries a page just beyond the same frontispiece that says:

NOTE: Previously published as "Eastern Shame Girl," this book was attacked -- and acquitted -- in the courts, with judicial recognition of its exceptional literary merit.

How funny! Such line drawings must have been too much for the American reading public at that time. Here's one more, from "The Monastery of the Esteemed Lotus," p. 126:

I think this monk is about to get into trouble