A Century of British Orientalists 1902-2001.

• Author: Rocher, Rosane
• Position: Book Review

A Century of British Orientalists 1902-2001. Edited by C. EDMUND BOSWORTH. Oxford: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS for THE BRITISH ACADEMY, 2001. Pp. i + 264. $65.

The British Academy, an honorary society for scholars in the humanities and social sciences created by Royal Charter in 1902, has undertaken the publication of a series of British Academy Centenary Monographs, some designed "to demonstrate the vitality of British scholarship at the start of a new millennium," others "to consider developments in scholarship in the 20th century" (back flap). The present volume reprints memorials of seven orientalists who were Fellows of the British Academy (FBAs), written on their death by fellow FBAs and published in the Academy's Proceedings. Most are unchanged, to the point of being inconsistent in the use of the "Sir" title for those who were knighted, in the articles' headings. The memorial of (Sir) Ralph Turner by R. H. Robins has been augmented with materials from an obituary by J. C. Wright and C. D. Cowan in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. For three FBAs who died in the first half of the twentieth century, new--or first, in the case of E. G. Brown, who, for unknown reasons, was not memorialized in the Academy's Proceedings--appreciations have been provided or commissioned by the editor. In the case of Arthur Waley, who resigned from his Fellowship, and hence was not the subject of a memorial in the Academy's Proceedings, an appreciation by Jonathan Spence, FBA, from his book, Chinese Roundabout: Essays in History and Culture (1992), has been included. Since it is not the practice of the Academy to memorialize its Corresponding Fellows, the editor has supplied an appreciation of Vladimir Minorsky, who was technically a Corresponding Fellow of the USSR, even though a resident of Great Britain. The editor also offers a memorial of (Sir) Gerard Clauson, who, "had the category of Senior Fellow of the Academy existed ..., would surely have...