Frances Wood
{{Short description|English librarian, sinologue and historian}}
{{other people}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2021}}
{{Infobox academic
| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1948}}
| image = Dr Frances Wood in 2015 grad.png
| caption = Wood being honoured in 2015 at the graduation ceremony of SOAS
| birth_place = London, United Kingdom
| alma_mater = Newnham College, Cambridge {{Small|(PhD)}}
| workplaces = {{Plainlist|
}}
| occupation = Librarian
| discipline = Historian
| sub_discipline = Chinese history
| thesis_url = https://doi.org/10.25501/SOAS.00033842
| thesis_title = Domestic Architecture in the Beijing Area, 1860–1930
| thesis_year = 1983
}}{{Listen |filename = Frances_wood_in_in_our_time_b01hxpxh.flac |title = Frances Wood's voice |type = speech |description = from the BBC programme In Our Time, 24 May 2012.{{Cite episode | title= Frances Wood |series= In Our Time |series-link= In Our Time (BBC Radio 4) |url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01hxpxh |station= BBC Radio 4 |date= 24 May 2012 |access-date= 18 January 2014 }} }}
Frances Wood ({{Lang-zh|c=吴芳思|p=Wú Fāngsī}}; born 1948) is an English librarian, sinologue and historian known for her writings on Chinese history, including Marco Polo, life in the Chinese treaty ports, and the First Emperor of China.
Biography
Wood was born in London in 1948, and went to art school in Liverpool in 1967, before going to Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied Chinese. She went to China to study Chinese at Peking University in 1975–1976.{{Cite episode | title = Frances Wood | url = http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wdctl | series = Desert Island Discs | series-link = Desert Island Discs | network = BBC | station = BBC Radio 4 | airdate = 5 December 2010 }}
File:Ksenia Kepping and Frances Wood.jpg Ksenia Kepping in March 2001]]
Wood joined the staff of the British Library in London in 1977 as a junior curator, and later served as curator of Chinese collections until her retirement in 2013.{{Cite web|author =Beth McKillop; Ursula Sims-Williams | title=Asian and African studies blog : Frances Wood, Curator of Chinese Collections | url=https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2013/06/frances-wood-curator-of-chinese-collections.html | publisher=British Library|date=13 June 2013 | access-date=2019-02-12 }}{{Cite news | last=Hutton | first=Alice | title=Leading academic Dr Frances Wood retires with warning: 'British Library should forget about duvets in its gift shop – and get back to research' | newspaper=Camden New Journal | url=http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2013/jun/leading-academic-dr-frances-wood-retires-warning-british-library-should-forget-about-d | date=6 June 2013 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140826113908/http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2013/jun/leading-academic-dr-frances-wood-retires-warning-british-library-should-forget-about-d | archive-date=26 August 2014 }} She is also a member of the steering committee of the International Dunhuang Project,{{Cite web | title=IDP People | url=http://idp.bl.uk/pages/about_people.a4d | publisher=British Library | access-date=2011-01-17 }} and the editor of the Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society. She was also a governor of Ashmount Primary School for 20 years, relinquishing this post on the completion of her current term of office in July 2014.
She has argued in her 1995 book, Did Marco Polo go to China?, that the book of Marco Polo (Il Milione) is not the account of a single person, but is a collection of travellers' tales. This book's claims about Polo's travels has been heavily criticized by Stephen G. Haw, David O. Morgan and Peter Jackson as lacking basic academic rigor.
In May 2012, she appeared on In Our Time on BBC Radio 4, talking about Marco Polo; she appeared again in the 2015 episode on Chinese legalism. In December 2012 she appeared on the Christmas University Challenge special as a member of the Newnham College, Cambridge team.
Bibliography
- 1985 Chinese illustration. British Library. {{ISBN|978-0-7123-0053-7}}
- 1991 (with Norah M. Titley). Oriental Gardens. British Library. {{ISBN|978-0-7123-0239-5}}
- 1995 Did Marco Polo go to China?. Secker & Warburg. {{ISBN|978-0-436-20384-8}}
- 1998 No Dogs and Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port Life in China, 1843-1943. John Murray. {{ISBN|978-0-7195-6400-0}}
- 2000 Hand-grenade practice in Peking: my part in the Cultural Revolution. John Murray. {{ISBN|978-0-7195-5781-1}}
- 2002 The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia. University of California Press. {{ISBN|978-0-520-23786-5}}
- 2005 The Forbidden City. British Museum Press. {{ISBN|978-0-7141-2789-7}}
- 2007 The First Emperor of China. Profile Books. {{ISBN|978-1-84668-032-8}}
- 2008 China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors. St. Martin's Press. {{ISBN|978-0-312-38112-7}}
- 2009 The Lure of China: Writers from Marco Polo to J. G. Ballard. Yale University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-300-15436-8}}
- 2010 (with Mark Barnard). The Diamond Sutra: The Story of the World's Earliest Dated Printed Book. British Library. {{ISBN|978-0-7123-5090-7}}
- 2017 Great Books of China. Head of Zeus. {{ISBN|9781786694515}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wdctl Frances Wood] on Desert Island Discs (broadcast 5 December 2010)
- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01hxpxh Frances Wood on In Our Time discussing Marco Polo (broadcast 24 May 2012)]
- [https://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/2204563 Interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 18 March 2016 (video)]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wood, Frances}}
Category:Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge