J O N K E R S R A R E B O O K S
WITH EXTENSIVE ANNOTATIONS BY A NOTED SCHOLAR 28. Sun Tzū And The Art Of War SUN TZ Ū ; GILES, Lionel Luzac &Co., 1910. First edition. Large 8vo (250 x 165mm). Bound in contemporary cloth, with the original yellow paper wrappers pasted to the covers. Ownership inscriptions of Dr Neville Whymant to upper cover and title page “A. Neville J. Whymant, Lectur- er in Chinese & Japanese, School of Oriental Studies, Univ. Lond. 1920”. This copy is extensively annotated by Whymant in English, Chinese and Japanese. Furthermore, it is interleaved with the entirety of A. L. Sadler’s 1944 translation of Sun Tzu (pp. 7-24, extracted from Three Military Classics Of China , Sydney, 1944). Whymant has also included to the endpapers and rear blanks relevant annotated newspaper clippings. A very good copy, uncut and untrimmed. Some looseness between gather- ings, repaired in places where cracking. [42251] £4,500 The first full translation of Sun Tzū from the original Chinese, with an excellent provenance and extensive annotations. Despite the development of the study of Chinese literature in the nineteenth century, there had not been a competent translation of Sun Tzū into a major European language until this edition appeared in 1910. A French Jesuit, Joseph Amiot, published a “so-called translation” in the eighteenth century, ranked by Giles as “an imposture”, and in 1905 the British army officer E. V. Calthrop published an equally inadequate edition in English, “...omissions were frequent; hard passages were wilful- ly distorted or slurred over” (Giles). Giles’s work is notable for providing the original Chinese alongside his accomplished English translation, and copious additional critical notes and commentary. The owner of this copy, Dr Neville Whymant, was a scholar of note in the fields of Chinese and Japanese literature and language. At the time of acquiring this book he was a lecturer at the
School of Oriental Studies London. His published work included scholarly books on the Chinese and Japanese languages, a Mongolian grammar, and guides to China aimed at the general reader.
Sun Tzū’s appearance in English has had a impact on modern warfare in the West that is difficult to overstate. It is re - quired reading at West Point and Sandhurst, and has influenced military strategists from the US Cen - tral Command to the Vietcong. PROVENANCE: Dr Neville Whymant (1894-c.1964), noted Orientalist scholar, lecturer at the School of Oriental Studies Lon- don, and later a Pro-
fessor of Literature at the Universities of
Peking and Tokyo.
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