Henry Yule

Henry Yule.

Sir Henry Yule (May 1, 1820 – December 30, 1889) was a Scottish Orientalist.

He was born at Inveresk, Scotland, near Edinburgh, the son of Major William Yule (1764–1839), translator of the Apothegms of Ali. Henry Yule was educated at Edinburgh, Addiscombe, and Chatham, and joined the Bengal Engineers in 1840. He served in both the Sikh wars, was secretary to Colonel (afterwards Sir) Arthur Phayre's mission to Ava (1855), and wrote his Narrative of the Mission to the Court of Ava (1858).

He retired in 1862 with the rank of colonel, and devoted his leisure to the medieval history and geography of Central Asia. He published Cathay and the Way Thither (1866), and the Book of Marco Polo (1871), for which he received the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. He also brought out, in collaboration with Dr Arthur C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson (1886), a dictionary of Anglo-Indian colloquial phrases.

For the Hakluyt Society, of which he was for some time president, he edited (1863) the Mirabilia Descripta of Jordanus and The Diary of William Hedges (1887–89). The latter contains a biography of Governor Pitt, grandfather of William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. From 1875 to 1889 Yule was a member of the Council of India, being appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India on his retirement. Yule was a contributor to the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, advising in Oriental matters.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

• See Memoir by his daughter, prefixed to the posthumous third edition of Marco Polo (1903).

External links

•  "Yule, Henry". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. 
• Yule, Henry, Sir. Hobson-Jobson: A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive. New ed. edited by William Crooke, B.A. London: J. Murray, 1903.
• Works by Henry Yule at Project Gutenberg
• Henry Yule at Thoemmes Continuum
• Digital versions (page images) of books by Henry Yule are available at the Toyo Bunko Rare Books Archive of the Digital Silk Roads Project
• Yule (translator and editor), Sir Henry (1866). Cathay and the way thither: being a collection of medieval notices of China. Issue 37 of Works issued by the Hakluyt Society. Printed for the Hakluyt society. http://books.google.com/books?id=KzEMAAAAIAAJ.  (Full text on Google Books)