Robert van Gulik

Robert Hans van Gulik (August 9, 1910 - September 24, 1967) was a highly educated orientalist, diplomat, musician (of the guqin) and writer, best known for the Judge Dee mysteries. Van Gulik grew up in Indonesia where he was tutored in Mandarin. He joined the Dutch Foreign Service in 1935 and was stationed in various countries: Japan, China, India and Lebanon during the 1958 Civil War there. From 1965 until his death of cancer in 1967 he was ambassador to Japan.

He is best known for his Judge Dee stories, the protagonist of which he borrowed from the 18th century Chinese detective novel Dee Goong An, which itself was loosely based on the adventures of a historical figure, the Confucian magistrate Judge Ti, Di or Dee.

The Judge Dee mysteries

In 1949 Robert van Gulik translated the 18th century detective novel Dee Goong An into English and it was published in Tokyo. The main character of this, Judge Dee, was supposedly based on a real statesman and detective Ti (Jen-chieh) who lived in the seventh century during the Tang Dynasty (600-900 CE), though in the novel itself elements of Ming Dynasty China (1300-1600 CE) were mixed in.

Thanks to his translation of this largely forgotten work, van Gulik became interested in Chinese detective fiction and decided to attempt one himself. His first attempt, The Chinese Bell Murders was written from 1948-1950 and "borrowed" Judge Dee and his assistants from Dee Goong An.

His intent in writing this first Judge Dee novel was, as he wrote in remarks on The Chinese Bell Murders, "to show modern Chinese and Japanese writers that their own ancient crime-literature has plenty of source material for detective and mystery-stories" ^*

Van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries follow the long tradition of Chinese Detective fiction, intentionally preserving a number of key elements of that writing culture. First there is the fact that many of the Judge Dee novels deal with three different and often unrelated cases, a traditional device in Chinese mysteries.

The whodunit element is also much less important in the Judge Dee stories than it is in the traditional detective story, though still more so than in traditional Chinese detective stories.

Other works

Robert van Gulik studied Indisch Recht (Dutch-Indies law) and Indologie (Indonesian culture) at Leiden University from 1929 until 1934, receiving his doctorate for a dissertation on the horse cult in Northeast Asia. Though he made his career in the Netherlands diplomatic service, he kept up his studies. During his life he wrote twenty-odd essays and monographs on various subjects, mainly but not exclusively on aspects of Chinese culture. Typically, much of his scholarly work was first published outside of the Netherlands.

Bibliography

(All publication dates of the Judge Dee novels are based on the UK publication.)

Judge Dee

The Judge Dee Mysteries in the order in which they were published

Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (originally Dee Goong An) (1949 translated from Chinese)
The Chinese Bell Murders (1958)
The Chinese Gold Murders (1959)
The Chinese Lake Murders (1960)
The Chinese Maze Murders (1962)
The Chinese Nail Murders (1961)
The Haunted Monastery (1963)
The Emperor's Pearl (1963)
The Lacquer Screen (1964)
The Red Pavilion (1964)
The Monkey and the Tiger, short stories (1965)
The Willow Pattern (1965)
Murder in Canton (1966)
The Phantom of the Temple (1966)
Judge Dee at Work, short stories (1967)
Necklace and Calabash (1967)
Poets and Murder (1968)

The Judge Dee Stories in the order in which they were set

Judge Dee at Work contains a "Judge Dee Chronology" telling of Dee's various posts, stories -- either books or short stories -- set during that posting, and giving information about the stories. The chronology lists the works in this order:

The Chinese Gold Murders
Five Auspicious Clouds, a short story in Judge Dee at Work
The Red Tape Murders, a short story in Judge Dee at Work
He came with the Rain, a short story in Judge Dee at Work
The Lacquer Screen
The Chinese Lake Murders
The Morning of the Monkey, a short story in the Monkey and the Tiger
The Haunted Monestery
The Murder on the Lotus Pond, a short story in Judge Dee at Work
The Chinese Bell Murders
The Two Beggers, a short story in Judge Dee at Work
The Wrong Sword, a short story in Judge Dee at Work
The Red Pavilion
The Emperor's Pearl
The Chinese Maze Murders
Phantom of the Temple
The Coffins of the Emperor, a short story in Judge Dee at Work
Murder on New Year's Eve, a short story in Judge Dee at Work
The Chinese Nail Murders
The Night of the Tiger, a short story in The Monkey and the Tiger
The Willow Pattern
Murder in Canton

Poets and Murder and Necklace and Calabash, which are not listed in the chronology were both set when Dee was magistrate of the district of Poo-yang where The Chinese Bell Murders was set.

Selected scholarly works

(with Christianus Cornelius Uhlenbeck). A Blackfoot-English vocabulary based on material from the Southern Peigans. Amsterdam, Uitgave van de N. V. Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers-Maatschappij, 1934. 12.
The Lore of the Chinese lute; an essay in ch'in ideology (1941)
Hsi K'ang and his Poetical Essay on the Lute (1941)
Siddham; An Essay on the History of Sanskrit Studies in China and Japan (1956)
Sexual Life in Ancient China. A preliminary survey of Chinese sex and society from ca. 1500 B.C. till 1644 A.D. (1961). (In spite of its titillating title, this book deals with the social role of sex, such as the institutions of concubinage and prostitution.)
The gibbon in China. An essay in Chinese animal lore (1967)

References

Janwillem van de Wetering; Robert van Gulik: Zijn Leven Zijn Werk; Loeb, Amsterdam, ISBN 90-6213-899-3 (Hardback, First edition 1989)
Janwillem van de Wetering; Robert van Gulik: His Life His Work; Soho Press, Inc.; ISBN 156947124X
C.D. Barkman, H. de Vries-van der Hoeven; Een man van drie levens (A man of three lives); Forum, Amsterdam, ISBN 90-225-1650-4 (1993)
John Thompson's collected anecdotes on van Gulik's Guqin artistry
The "Judge Dee" website
The Dutch language Rechter Tie website

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