author
Frederic Henry Balfour
1846–1909
Best remembered for bringing Taoist writing to English-language readers, this Victorian-era writer spent much of his working life in Shanghai as an editor, essayist, and keen interpreter of Chinese thought. His books mix curiosity, literary flair, and an early Western attempt to make sense of classical Chinese texts.
1 Audiobook
Austin and His Friends
by Frederic Henry Balfour
About the author
A British expatriate writer and editor, Frederic Henry Balfour lived in Shanghai during the Victorian era and built a career as an essayist, novelist, and sinologist. He is most often remembered for his English work on Taoist literature, especially Taoist Texts: Ethical, Political and Speculative (1884), which included translations connected with the Tao Te Ching.
Balfour also worked in journalism and was associated with the North China Daily News, one of the major English-language newspapers in Shanghai. That mix of newsroom experience and literary ambition gave his writing an unusual character: part scholarship, part storytelling, and part attempt to explain Chinese philosophy to Western readers of his time.
Alongside his nonfiction, he published fiction as well, including novels such as Giraldi: The Curse of Love and The Undergraduate. Today he is chiefly of interest to readers drawn to early translations of Chinese classics and to the history of how East Asian thought was introduced to English-speaking audiences.