Description
ARTHUR COOPER grew up in a small village near Oxford, studying Icelandic in his youth and turning to Far Eastern languages shortly before the War. He served in the Foreign Office from 1938 to 1968 and was involved in break-ing Japanese codes for the Government Code and Cipher School. After his retirement he returned to a special interest in Chinese poetry and script. He published Li Po and Tu Fu (Penguin Classics) in 1973 and a monograph on The Creation of the Chinese Script (China Society) in 1978. Shortly before his death in 1988 he con-tributed to the Oxford Companion to the Mind and to the Penguin Classics volume The Translator's Art. What he completed of his work on 'Heart and Mind': Ancient Language-Making as Recorded in the Chinese Script is presently being edited for publication.
When Arthur Cooper died on the 16th January 1988, the English language lost not its most prolific but, arguably, its finest translator from Chinese poetry since Arthur Waley. ISBN:0948454598
