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Rachewiltz Igor de
Person · 1929-2016

Igor de Rachewiltz (April 11, 1929 – July 30, 2016) was an Italian historian and philologist specializing in Mongol studies. He was born in Rome. In 1947, he read Michael Prawdin's Tschingis-Chan und seine Erben ("Genghis Khan and his Heritage") and became interested in learning the Mongolian language. He graduated with a law degree from a university in Rome and pursued Oriental studies in Naples.

In the early 1950s, de Rachewiltz went to Australia on scholarship. He earned his PhD in Chinese history from Australian National University, Canberra, in 1961. His dissertation was on Genghis Khan's secretary, 13th-century Khitan scholar Yelü Chucai. He married Ines Adelaide Brasch in 1956 with whom he had one daughter.

In 1965 he became a fellow at the Department of Far Eastern History, Australian National University (1965–67), becoming a senior Fellow of the Division of Pacific and Asian History at the Australian National University (1967–94), a research-only fellowship. He published a translation of the Secret History of the Mongols in eleven volumes of Papers on Far Eastern History (1971–1985). He also completed projects by the prominent Mongolists, Antoine Mostaert and Henri Serruys, after their deaths. He became a visiting professor at the Sapienza University of Rome three times (1996, 1999, 2001).

In 2004, he published his translation of the Secret History with Brill Publishers; it was selected by Choice as Outstanding Academic Title (2005) and is now in its second edition. In 2007 he donated his personal library of around 6000 volumes to the Scheut Memorial Library.

Late in his life, de Rachewiltz was an emeritus Fellow in the Pacific and Asian History Division of the Australian National University. His research interests included the political and cultural history of China and Mongolia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, East-West political and cultural contacts, and Sino-Mongolian philology generally.

Igor de Rachewiltz died on July 30, 2016. He was 87.

Person · 1819-1899

Bernard Quaritch was born in a village outside Göttingen, Germany. After first working for booksellers in Nordhausen and Berlin, he travelled to London in 1842, carrying a letter of introduction to Henry Bohn, the leading London bookseller. Quaritch was employed by Bohn until, in 1847, he set up his own business. Quaritch built up his business with an impressive clientele including those in this archive. He became lifelong friends with Edward Fitzgerald and published his translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in 1859. He continued in business until his death in 1899, when the business passed to his son, Bernard Alfred Quaritch.

For a more indepth biography see: Bernard Quaritch Ltd: Our History (https://www.quaritch.com/about/our-history/#:~:text=We%20have%20been%20buying%20and,London%20in%201842%2C%20aged%2023).