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Derk Bodde's first acquaintance with China began when as a young boy he lived in Shanghai, where his father taught physics for several years. he majored in English at Harvard University, however, and his Shakespeare and the Ireland Forgeries was published as the second in a series of honors theses by the Harvard University Press in 1930. At that time, there were no jobs to be had, so when he learned of fellowships available in Chinese studies, he went to what was then known as Peiping to study Chinese civilization. There he joined Herrlee Creel, John Fairbank, George Kennedy, and others who later became the founders of Chinese scholarship in the United States. In Peiping he became particularly interested in Chinese philosophy and translated the first volume of Fung Yu-lan's History of Chinese Philosophy. he also met Galia Speshneff, whom he married in 1935.
With the onset of the Japanese war, he went first to the Netherlands, where he received his PhD under J. J. L. Duyvendak, and then came to the United States to teach at the University of Pennsylvania. he remained...