Liu Yi and The Dragon Princess

David Hawkes was born in 1923. He studied Classics (Latin and Greek) for a year (1942) in the War and Classical Chinese for two and a half years (1945–1948) after the War at Oxford University, followed by three years as a research student at the National University in Beiping/Beijing (1948–1951). He was professor of Chinese in Oxford University from 1960 to 1971 and a Fellow of All Souls College from 1973 to 1983, after which he abandoned Chinese Studies and lived in rural retirement in Wales. Publications: a translation of the Chuci (The Songs of the South, Oxford, 1959; greatly revised edition, Penguin, 1985); a translation of Hongloumeng (The Story of the Stone, vols. 1–3, Penguin, 1973–1980); and A Little Primer of Tu Fu (Oxford, 1967; reprinted Hong Kong, 1987). In 1989 The Chinese University Press published a volume of his essays on Chinese literature, entitled Classical, Modern and Humane. In 2000 the Centre for Literature and Translation of Lingnan University, Hong Kong, published a facsimile edition of notebooks he kept during the period of the Stone translation.