B. L. (Bertram Lenox) Putnam Weale

Born Bertram Lenox Simpson in 1877, he became widely known by the pen name B. L. Putnam Weale. He was a British author and journalist whose writing focused heavily on China, and he built a reputation through books that tried to explain fast-changing events in East Asia to English-language readers.

He was in China during the Boxer Rebellion and later worked in journalism there, including service as the Daily Telegraph's correspondent in Beijing from 1911 to 1914. Those years placed him close to the upheavals surrounding the end of the Qing dynasty and the early Chinese republic, giving his books an immediate, firsthand quality.

Putnam Weale wrote both reportage and fiction, with works including Indiscreet Letters from Peking, The Re-Shaping of the Far East, and The Fight for the Republic in China. He died in 1930, but his books still offer a striking window into how one prolific observer interpreted China and international politics in the early twentieth century.