John DeFrancis worked at Seton Hall University in the Department of Asian Studies’ Chinese Studies program, authoring textbooks for Mandarin Chinese in the early 1960s.

John DeFrancis was hired by Dr. John B. Tsu, the founding chair of the Department of Asian Studies. At that time, the Institute of Far Eastern Studies, which was founded in 1951, acted as a leader in the US with respect to teaching Asian Studies and conducting research on the topics in the field.

The original recordings were produced at Seton Hall University in Fahy Hall on reel-to-reel tapes. Over 100 hours of audio material were recorded. Between 2008-2010, the reel-to-reel tapes were digitized to help preserve the audio materials, as the condition of the tapes began to deteriorate. As such, you may hear some background noise, clicks and other auditory imperfections in the recordings.