Brewitt-Taylor was the first to fully translate a traditional Chinese novel into English. His life, in teaching and the Chinese Imperial Customs, makes a fascinating study of an Englishman in Qing and early Republican China. His personal story is marked by sadness, bereavement and his wife's madness.
After fifteen years in the printing industry, Isidore Cyril Cannon entered academic life following undergraduate and postgraduate study at the London School of Economics. He taught in adult and higher education, engaged in post-doctoral research, and was founding Head of Department of Humanities and Social Studies at what is now the University of the South Bank, London, before appointment as Deputy Director responsible for academic affairs at the forerunner to the Plymouth University in the UK. For nearly ten years he worked in Hong Kong, helping to set up the precursor to City University as the member of senior management responsible for academic affairs. Following retirement he was appointed Academic Consultant to Lingnan College on its transition to university status.
This is a valuable book. Brewitt-Taylor is an interesting subject for three reasons: he had a distinguished career in the Chinese customs service, an important institution that mediated China's relationship with the outside world; he undertook the first quality translation of an important traditional Chinese novel, which made him an important interpreter of Chinese culture in the west; his family life gives us insight into the experiences of those Britons who went abroad in the Victorian and Edwardian ages. While B-T himself remains an elusive personality, through the author's judicious analysis gradually a sense of the man and his world emerges. -- Richard Horowitz, California State University, Northridge
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