James Legge

Born in 1815 in Scotland, James Legge became a missionary in the Chinese world and spent many years in Malacca and Hong Kong. Alongside his religious work, he devoted himself to the close study of classical Chinese writing and built a reputation as one of the great early Western interpreters of Chinese thought.

Legge is best remembered for translating major Confucian works and other Chinese classics into English with unusual care and range. His multi-volume translations gave many English-speaking readers their first serious access to texts that had shaped Chinese learning for centuries.

Later in life he joined the University of Oxford, where he served as the first professor of Chinese there and continued his scholarship until his death in 1897. His work remains an important part of the history of translation, Sinology, and cross-cultural study.