James Legge was a Scottish linguist, missionary, sinologist, and translator best known for his early translations of Classical Chinese texts into English. He spent much of his career in East Asia, serving as a representative of the London Missionary Society in Malacca and Hong Kong from 1840 to 1873. Legge's scholarly work earned him recognition in academic circles. In 1876, he was appointed the first Professor of Chinese at Oxford University, a position he held until 1897. This appointment reflected both his expertise in Chinese language and literature and the growing Western academic interest in Chinese civilization during the nineteenth century. One of Legge's major contributions to scholarship was his work with Max Müller on the Sacred Books of the East series. This monumental project resulted in 50 volumes published between 1879 and 1891, making important religious and philosophical texts from Asian traditions accessible to English-speaking audiences for the first time.