Arthur Frederick Wright (December 3, 1913 – August 11, 1976) was an American historian and sinologist. He was a professor of history at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

. He specialized in Chinese social and intellectual history of the pre-modern period."Prof. Arthur Wright of Yale, 62, Scholar of Chinese History, Dies,"
''New York Times'' (US). August 14, 1976; retrieved 2011-03-14

Early life

Wright's undergraduate degrees at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

and

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

were followed by further studies at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. He earned a master's degree in 1940; and he was awarded a doctorate in 1947.

Career

Wright and his wife,

Mary C. Wright Mary Clabaugh Wright (born Mary Oliver Clabaugh; Chinese name Ruì Mǎlì; September 25, 1917 – June 18, 1970) was an American historian and sinologist who specialized in the study of late Qing dynasty and early twentieth century China. She w ...

, joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1947; and both were made full professors in 1958. In 1959, Wright and his wife joined the faculty at Yale. In 1961, Wright became the Charles Seymour Professor of History at Yale. Wright believed that the scholar "should occasionally stand back and contemplate the whole continuum of time and of problems which give meaning to his specialized studies."

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Arthur Wright,

OCLC OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was ...

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...

encompasses roughly 70+ works in 200+ publications in 6 languages and 8,800+ library holdings.WorldCat Identities

Wright, Arthur F. 1913–1976
/ref> * ''Studies in Chinese Thought'' (1953) * ''Buddhism in Chinese History'' (1957) * * ''Confucianism and Chinese civilization'' (1964) * ''Perspectives on the Tʻang'' (1973) *
The Sui Dynasty
' (1978) (about the

Sui Dynasty The Sui dynasty (, ) was a short-lived imperial dynasty of China that lasted from 581 to 618. The Sui unified the Northern and Southern dynasties, thus ending the long period of division following the fall of the Western Jin dynasty, and layi ...

) * ''The Confucian Persuasion'' (1980) * ''Studies in Chinese Buddhism'' (1990)

References

1913 births 1976 deaths 20th-century American historians Alumni of the University of Oxford American sinologists Harvard University alumni Historians of China Internees at the Weixian Internment Camp Presidents of the Association for Asian Studies Stanford University alumni Writers from Portland, Oregon Yale University faculty {{US-academic-stub