First edition. Large 8vo (250 x 165mm). Bound in contemporary cloth, with the original yellow paper wrappers pasted to the upper and lower covers. Ownership inscriptions of noted Orientalist Dr Neville Whymant to upper cover and title page "A. Neville J. Whymant, Lecturer in Chinese & Japanese, School of Oriental Studies, Univ. Lond. 1920".This copy extensively annotated by Whymant in English, Chinese and Japanese, occasionally providing the Japanese characters for the printed Chinese script. 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 annotated newspaper clippings relating to his own work, as well as references to Sun Tzu in the popular press during the Second World War. A very good copy, uncut and untrimmed. Some looseness between gatherings, repaired in places where cracking.

The first full translation of Sun Tz from the original Chinese, with an excellent provenance and extensive annotations.
Sun Tz 's The Art Of War, thought to be composed in the 5th century BC, remains one of the most important and influential military treatise ever published.
Despite the development of the study of Chinese literature in the nineteenth century, there had not been a competent translation of Sun Tz into a major European language until this edition appeared in 1910.
A French Jesuit, Joseph Amiot, published a translation in the eighteenth century, but "his so called translation of Sun Tz , if placed side by side with the original, is seen at once to be little better than an imposture. It contains a great deal that Sun Tz did not write, and very little indeed of what he did" (Lionel Giles, preface to the present work).
In 1905, the British army officer E. V. Calthrop published an equally inadequate edition in English, "it was evident that the translator's knowledge of Chinese was far too scanty to fit him to grapple with the manifold difficulties of Sun Tz ... omissions were frequent; hard passages were wilfully 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, and later became a Professor of Oriental Literature at both Peking and Tokyo. 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 Tz 's appearance in English has had a impact on modern warfare in the West that is difficult to overstate. It is required reading at West Point and Sandhurst, and has influenced military strategists from US Central Command to the Vietcong.

PROVENANCE: Dr Neville Whymant (1894-c. 1964), noted Orientalist scholar, lecturer at the School of Oriental Studies London, and later a Professor of Literature at the Universities of Peking and Tokyo.

Stock ID: 42251