Herbert Allen Giles

Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935) was a British diplomat and scholar of Chinese. He served in the British consular service in China from 1867 to 1892 and then became professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge, a post he held for some thirty-five years. His Chinese-English Dictionary (1892) fixed the Wade-Giles system of romanization that was used in English for most of the twentieth century. He translated Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio and the writings of Zhuangzi, compiled a Chinese biographical dictionary and wrote A History of Chinese Literature (1901). He was known for his combative reviews of other sinologists' work.