Alexander Wylie (missionary)

Alexander Wylie (Traditional Chinese: 偉烈亞力, Simplified Chinese: 伟烈亚力) (6 April 1815 – 10 February 1887), British Protestant Christian missionary to China. He is known for his translation work and scholarship during the late Qing Dynasty.

Life

He was born in London, and went to school at Drumlithie, Kincardineshire, and at Chelsea.

While apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, Wylie picked up a Chinese grammar written in Latin, and after mastering the latter tongue made such good progress in Chinese that in 1846 James Legge engaged him to superintend the London Missionary Society's press at Shanghai. In this position he acquired a wide knowledge of Chinese religion and civilisation, and especially of mathematics, so that he was able to demonstrate in his paper Jottings on the Science of the Chinese that Sir George Horner's method (1819) of solving equations of all orders had been known to the Chinese mathematicians of the 14th century.^[1]

He made several journeys into the interior, notably in 1858 with Lord Elgin on a British Navy gunboat up the Yangtze and to Nanking, where he served as one member of a delegation of three to meet with officials of the Taiping, and in 1868 with Griffith John to the capital of Szechuen and the source of the Han. He completed the distribution of one million Chinese New Testaments provided by the British and Foreign Bible Society's special fund of 1855. From 1863 he was an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society. He was succeeded by Samuel Dyer, Junior, the son of Samuel Dyer and brother-in-law of Hudson Taylor.

In Chinese he translated books on arithmetic, calculus(Loomis), algebra (De Morgan's), mechanics, astronomy (Herschel's), in collaboration with Li Shanlan, and The Marine Steam Engine (TJ Main and T Brown), as well as translations of the Gospel According to Matthew and the Gospel According to Mark. In English his chief works were Jottings on the Science of the Chinese,published in 1853, Shanghai, a collection of articles published under the title Chinese Researches by Alexander Wylie (Shanghai, 1897).Memorials of Protestant Missionaries (1867), Notes on Chinese Literature (Shanghai, 1867), He also published an article on the Nestorian Tablet in Xian.

His health and eyesight was failing and he returned to London in 1877. In 1882, he sold about 20,000 Chinese titles and antique books which he had amassed in China to the Oxford Library. His collection is now housed in the Bodleian Library as the Alexander Wylie Collection. Blind and bed-ridden, he died at his home in Hampstead on 6 February 1887 and was buried in Highgate cemetery.

Works

Wylie on Tian yuan shu in Jottings on the Science of the Chinese

• Alexander Wylie (1867). Memorials of Protestant missionaries to the Chinese: giving a list of their publications, and obituary notices of the deceased. With copious indexes. American Presbyterian Mission Press. p. 331. Retrieved 15 May 2011. 
• Alexander Wylie (1902). Notes on Chinese Literature: With Introductory Remarks on the Progressive Advancement of the Art; and a List of Translations from the Chinese Into Various European Languages. Printed at the American Presbyterian mission Press. 
• Alexander Wylie; Henri Cordier (1897). Chinese Researches. 

See also

• List of London Missionary Society missionaries in China

Notes

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Wylie, Alexander". Encyclopædia Britannica. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
•  Carlyle, Edward Irving (1900). "Wylie, Alexander". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography. 63. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 
• Carlyle, E. I.; Bickers, Robert. "Wylie, Alexander (1815–1887)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30133.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Alfred James Broomhall, Hudson Taylor & China's Open Century, Book Six: Assault On The Nine, Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1988
• Henri Cordier, The Life and Labours of Alexander Wylie, London: Trubner & Co, 1887

External links

• Works related to Wylie, Alexander (DNB00) at Wikisource

Protestant missions to China
Background	Christianity Protestantism Chinese history Missions timeline Christianity in China Nestorians Jesuits Protestant missions in China 1807–1953
People	Gladys Aylward Pearl S. Buck Thomas Cochrane Hunter Corbett Jonathan Goforth Karl Gützlaff Carl C. Jeremiassen Eric Liddell Robert Samuel Maclay Lottie Moon Robert Morrison (1782-1834) Gideon Nye Timothy Richard Issachar Jacox Roberts (1902-1871) Cambridge Seven Hudson Taylor (more missionaries)
Missionary agencies	OMF International/China Inland Mission LMS ABCFM CMS M.E.M US Presbyterian Mission (more agencies)
Impact	Bible translations into Chinese Medical missions in China Manchurian revival Chinese Christian colleges Chinese hymnody Chinese Roman Type Minnan Roman Type Foochow Roman Type Anti-footbinding Anti-opium
Pivotal events	Taiping Rebellion First Opium War Second Opium War Unequal treaty Yangzhou riot Tianjin Massacre Kucheng Massacre Boxer Crisis Xinhai Revolution Chinese Civil War WWII People's Republic
Chinese Protestants	Feng Yuxiang Liang Fa Wat Ngong (Qu Yaang) Samuel Lamb Wang Ming-Dao Watchman Nee Xi Shengmo Sun Yat-sen John Sung Allen Yuan