YULE, Henry.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Four autograph letters signed to Dr William Lockhart. A appealing snapshot of a 19th-century scholarly relationship, shedding light on the publication of Yule's well-received The Book of Ser Marco Polo (1871) and his revision of the text for the 1875 second edition. The recipient was the second person Yule thanked in the book's preface, and his contributions are alluded to frequently in the text.Following his retirement from the Indian civil service in 1862, Colonel Yule turned his attention to scholarship and served as president of the Hakluyt Society from 1887 to 1889. By the 1870s, he was on intimate terms with Lockhart (1811-1896), a former London Missionary Society doctor and a respected sinologist. In the first letter, written while Yule is finalizing his manuscript in Palermo, he asks for help with "the interpretation of the character on this coin rubbing which Mr [Alexander] Wylie gave me. It was one of a treasure hid during the siege of Siang Yang mentioned by M. Polo and which was turned up shortly before Mr Wylie's visit to that city." The coin is illustrated, and its circumstances of discovery discussed, on page 132 of Volume II. The following year, he writes to Lockhart to record his pleasure at "the good impression my book has made on you."By 1874, Yule was busy preparing a revised second edition, published in 1875. From Italy, he writes to Lockhart in July, finding himself "very much in want of a little help in Chinese interpretation... The enclosed map [not pr

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