[KS] Re: Reginald Horace Blyth

[Ross King]

>On a slightly different note -

Yet a different note here.

Does anybody on this list have any information about one Reginald Horace
Blyth? Probably just my ignorance, but I stumbled across him lately and am
very curious to learn more about him.

A quick check of the UBC and Harvard on-line catalogs shows him to have
authored numerous books on Japanese haiku, Zen poetry, and humor. Seems
virtually all his books were published in Japan by Hokuseido Press, but I
think one was published by the British Haiku Society or some such thing,
leading me to wonder if he was (is?) a Brit.

His 1959 book _Oriental Humor_ is unusual in that it includes a significant
section on Korea (as opposed to, say, Leonard Feinberg (ed.), 1971, _Asian
Laughter_, which ignores Korea entirely). The bibliography to Blyth's book
("of works in the author's library") lists more than a dozen old Korean
books (yadam-type collections) from which he culled the anecdotes
translated in his book, and it seems clear he had a significant personal
collection of rare/old Korean books.

Even more surprising (for me, anyway), was the following work I found on
the computer:

             AUTHOR
                               Yi, Un, Prince, 1897-
              TITLE
                               A first book of Korean / by Lee Eun and R.
H. Blyth.
              PUB. INFO
                               Toyko : Hokuseido Press 1950.
              DESCRIPTION
                               114 p. : ill., map (1 fold.) ; 18 cm.
              SUBJECTS
                               *S1 Korean language--Grammar.
              LOCATION
                               Harvard-Yenching: (W) PL913.Y5 1950x

I have not actually seen this work (and was previously unaware of it), but
it is interesting that one of the last Korean princes (how many were there,
anyway?) would have co-authored an introductory Korean language textbook,
published in Japan, with R. H. Blyth as co-author. (It is clear from
Blyth's book _Oriental Humor_, by the way, that he new more than a
smattering of Korean, in addition to Japanese and hanmun.)

So I guess my questions are: who exactly was R. H. Blyth (diplomat?
academic? private scholar? nationality? education?)

and

What happened to his personal library, and how was it formed?

Perhaps also: what's up with Prince Yi Eun and his writing a textbook? Did
he write anything else of this nature?

Cheers,

Ross King
Associate Professor of Korean
University of British Columbia




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