Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935) was a British diplomat and sinologist, educated at Charterhouse. He was only the second professor of Chinese appointed at Cambridge University, succeeding Thomas Wade, and taught there for thirty-five years. One of his major achievements was the modified version of a Mandarin Chinese romanization system produced earlier by Thomas Wade, resulting in the widely known Wade-Giles Chinese transliteration system. He was a prolific writer, and apart from the present volume, his major works included translations of Confucius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, a Chinese-English dictionary and his Chinese Biographical Dictionary for which he was awarded the Prix St. Julien by the French Academy in 1897.