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Edmund BackhouseEdward Backhouse (1873-1944) was a British baronet, would-be-oriental scholar and "black sheep" of Backhouse family who is currently famous mostly of his fraudulent diary. Edward Backhouse was born into a Quaker family in Darlington; His relatives included many churchmen and scholars and he probably tried to rise to their stature. He ended up as a professor of law and literature in the University of Peking. Backhouse formed connections to the Chinese imperial court and used them to negotiate favourable business deals to western companies. In 1910 he published a book China Under the Empress Dowager and in 1914 Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking, both with British journalist J.O.P. Bland. With these books he established his reputation as an oriental scholar. Both are probably based on Backhouse's own forgeries. In 1913 Backhouse begun to donate number of Chinese manuscripts to Bodleian Library, probably hoping to receive a status of professor in return. He delivered total of eight tons of manuscripts to the Bodleian between 1913-1923. The prominence of the manuscripts is in serious doubt. In 1916 he presented himself as a representative of the Imperial Court and negotiated two fraudulent deals with American Bank Note Company and a British shipbuilding company. Neither company received any confirmation from the court. When they tried to contact Backhouse, he had left the country. When he returned to Peking in 1922, he refused to speak about the deals. For the last 18 years of his life he spent alone in China and died in Peking in 1944. In 1973 British historian Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper received a manuscript of Backhouse's memoirs. In his would-be-memoirs Backhouse claimed to have had affairs with prominent people including Lord Rosebery, Verlaine, an Ottoman princess, Oscar Wilde and even the Empress dowager of China. He also claimed to have visited Leo Tolstoy and played opposite to Sarah Bernhardt. Trevor-Roper described the diary as "pornographic" and investigated its claims. Eventually he declared that the supposed exploits were just a figment of Backhouse's own imagination. Books Backhouse, Edward
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