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James Legge (; 20 December 181529 November 1897) was a Scottish linguist, missionary, sinologist, and translator who was best known as an early translator of Classical Chinese texts into English. Legge served as a representative of the London Missionary Society in Malacca and Hong Kong (1840–1873) and was the first Professor of Chinese at Oxford University (1876–1897). In association with Max Müller he prepared the monumental Sacred Books of the East series, published in 50 volumes between 1879 and 1891.
After Isabella died, he married secondly a widow, Hannah Mary Willetts née Johnstone (d. 1881).
He was third and final editor of the Chinese Serial, the first Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong. The paper closed in May 1856.
In 1867, Legge returned to Dollar in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, where he invited Wang Tao to join him, and received his LLD from the University of Aberdeen in 1870. While in Scotland, he also revisited his native burgh, Huntly, accompanied by Wang Tao. He then returned to Hong Kong as pastor at Union Church from 1870 to 1873. While in Hong Kong he published The She King (Classic of Poetry) in 1871 which according to Peter France is the first substantial volume of Chinese poetry in English translation still in use. The work underwent a new edition in 1876 in verse.
He took a long trip to North China, beginning 2 April 1873 in Shanghai, arriving at Tianjin by boat, then travelling by mule cart and arriving in Peking on 16 April 1873, where he stayed at the London Missionary Society headquarters. He visited the Great Wall, Ming Tombs and the Temple of Heaven, where he felt compelled to take off his shoes with holy awe. He left Peking, accompanied by Joseph Edkins, and headed for Shandong by mule cart to visit Jinan, Taishan, where they ascended the sacred Mount Tai, carried by four men on chairs. Leaving Mount Tai on 15 May, they visited Confucius Temple and the Forest of Confucius at Qufu, where he climbed to the top of Confucius' burial mound. Legge returned to Shanghai by way of the Grand Canal, and thence to England via Japan and the USA in 1873.
In addition to his other works Legge wrote The Life and Teaching of Confucius (1867); The Life and Teaching of Mencius (1875); The Religions of China (1880); and other books on Chinese literature and religion. His respect for Confucianism was controversial among his fellow missionaries.
At Oxford he attracted few students to his lectures but worked hard for some 20 years on his translations of the Chinese classics in his study at 3 Keble Terrace, later renumbered 3 Keble Road, which now has an Oxfordshire Blue Plaque in his memory. Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Scheme: Professor James Legge According to an anonymous contemporary obituary in the Pall Mall Gazette, Legge was in his study every morning at three o'clock, winter and summer, having retired to bed at ten. When he got up in the morning the first thing he did was to make himself a cup of tea over a spirit-lamp. Then he worked away at his translations while all the household slept.
In 1879, Legge was a member of a committee formed to create a women's college at Oxford "in which no distinction will be made between students on the ground of their belonging to different religious denominations". This resulted in the founding of Somerville Hall, later renamed Somerville College, one of the first two Oxford colleges for women.
While at Oxford, Legge was an ardent opponent of Britain's Opium, and was a founding member of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade in 1874.
Legge was given an honorary MA, University of Oxford, and LLD, University of Edinburgh, 1884. He was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1895.
Most of his most important manuscripts and letters are archived at the School of Oriental and African Studies and, secondly, in the Bodleian Library.
Legge originally planned his Chinese Classics as seven volumes, but his translations of the I Ching and Book of Rites (and several others) were instead included in the Sacred Books of the East series edited by Max Müller (Oxford: Clarendon Press):
Other works:
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