Herbert Giles

Herbert Giles
Born	(1845-12-08)December 8, 1845
Died	February 13, 1935(1935-02-13) (aged 89)
Citizenship	British
Scientific career
Fields	History, sinology

Herbert Allen Giles (8 December 1845 – 13 February 1935) was a British diplomat and sinologist, educated at Charterhouse. He modified a Mandarin Chinese Romanization system earlier established by Thomas Wade, resulting in the widely known Wade-Giles Chinese transliteration system. Among his prolific works were translations of Confucius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, and the first widely published Chinese-English dictionary.

Biography

Herbert A. Giles was the fourth son of John Allen Giles (1808–1884), an Anglican clergyman. After studying at Charterhouse, Herbert became a British diplomat to China (1867–1892). He also spent several years at Fort Santo Domingo (1885–1888) in Tamsui, Taiwan. He was the father of Bertram, Valentine, Lancelot, Edith, Mable, and Lionel Giles. In 1897 Herbert Giles became only the second professor of Chinese appointed at the University of Cambridge, succeeding Thomas Wade. At the time of his appointment, there were no other sinologists at Cambridge. Giles was therefore free to spend most of his time among the ancient Chinese texts earlier donated by Thomas Wade, publishing what he translated from his wide reading.

Giles received the Prix St. Julien award from the French Academy in 1897 for his Chinese Biographical Dictionary. He dedicated the third edition of Strange Stories (1916) to his seven grandchildren, but at the end of his life was on speaking terms with only one of his surviving children. An ardent agnostic, he was also an enthusiastic freemason. He never became a Fellow at one of the constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge, despite being a university professor for 35 years. He finally retired in 1932, and died in his ninetieth year.

Diplomatic Postings

• British Vice Consul at Pagoda Island, Mawei (1880–1883)
• British Vice Consul at Shanghai (1883–1885)
• British Consul at Tamsui (1885–1891)
• British Consul at Ningpo (1891–1893)

Written works

• Chinese without a Teacher (1872; sixth edition, 1908; ninth edition, 1931)
• Using Examples to Learn the Spoken Language (Yuxue Jiuyu) (1873)
• Using Examples to Learn the Written Language (Zixue Jiuyu) (1874)
• Chinese Sketches London: Trubner & Co., 1876.
• Handbook of the Swatow Dialect (1877)
• Glossary of Reference (1878; third edition, 1900)
• Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1880, London) from Pu Songling's Liaozhai Zhiyi.
• Historic China (1882)
• The Remains of Lao Tzu (1886)
• The 1415-page A Chinese-English Dictionary (Hua-Ying Zidian) (1892, Shanghai; 1912, London) in Mandarin, Hakka, Cantonese, and Min.
• Chinese Biographical Dictionary (1897), which received the Prix St. Julien of the French Academy
• Chinese Poetry in English Verse (1898)
• History of Chinese Literature (1901)
• China and the Chinese (1902)
• Introduction to The History of Chinese Art (1905)
• Chinese Fairy Tales (1911)
• The Civilization of China (1911)
• China and the Manchus (1912)
• "China" in History of the Nations (1913)
• Confucianism and Its Rivals (1915)
• How to Begin Chinese: The Hundred Best Characters (1919)
• The Second Hundred Best Characters 1922)
• Revision of Bullock's Progressive Exercises (1922)
• Chuang Tzǔ: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer (1926, Shanghai)
• The Chinese and Their Food (Zhonghua Fanshi) (1947, Shanghai) (posthumous)

See also

• Chinese language
• Chinese literature
• Chinese classics
• Sinology
• Lionel Giles

Additional sources

• Cooley, James C., Jr. T.F. Wade in China: Pioneer in Global Diplomacy 1842-1882. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

• Works by Herbert Giles at Project Gutenberg
• Images of Herbert Giles and Family