Tao Te Ching
Lionel Giles
1875 – 1958 CE
Victorian "Taoist at heart"
Translator, philosopher, sinologist, and museum curator; Giles followed in his father's footsteps—Herbert Giles who co-created the famous Wade-Giles method of Chinese translation. His translation in 1910 of Sun Tzu's Art of War made monumental strides in accuracy over previous translations. Some of his other translations include The Analects of Confucius, the Sayings of Lao Tzu, the Book of Mencius, A Gallery of Chinese Immortals, and Taoist Teaching of Lieh Tzu.Lineages
British Translators
Eras
Western
Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)Gilded Age (1860 – 1900 CE)
Great Depression (1929 – 1941 CE)
Victorian (1837 – 1901 CE)
Roaring Twenties (1920 – 1929 CE)
Chinese
Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912 CE)Unlisted Sources
Art of War introduction
Quotes by Lionel Giles (3 quotes)
“scholars of the later Han dynasty seem to have enjoyed nothing so much as forging, if not the whole, at any rate portions, of the works of ancient authors. Someone even produced a treatise under the name of Lieh Tzu, a philosopher mentioned by Chuang Tzu, not seeing that the individual in question was a creation of Chuang Tzu's brain!”
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“How then did the legend of Sun Tzu originate? It may be that the growing celebrity of the book imparted by degrees a kind of factious renown to its author... It is obvious that any attempt to reconstruct even the outline of Sun Tzu's life must be based almost wholly on conjecture.”
from Art of War introduction
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“these sayings have been accepted and endorsed by all the greatest captains of Chinese history, they offer a combination of freshness and sincerity, acuteness and common sense, which quite excludes the idea that they were artificially concocted... their essence has been distilled from a large store of personal observation and experience.”
from Art of War introduction
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