)[1] was an early and mid-twentieth century British travel and adventure writer best known for his The Golden Lotus (1939), a four-volume translation of the Chinese novel, Jin Ping Mei.
After an early career in religious and educational work, Egerton served in the World War One British army, fighting in the Balkans.
Upon his return, he spent a brief time in teaching, but his interest in anthropolological and social theory led him to study the Chinese language in order to better understand a civilization that was of equal but different development.
This commitment led him to translate Jin Ping Mei a 17th century erotic classic Chinese novel, which appeared until 1939 as The Golden Lotus.
[8] He drew particular attention to the question of sex and to the Freudian theory that sexual nature develops in various ways and is involved in all parts of the individual's being.
Since sexual energy could also be used for religious, aesthetic, and economic ends, sex education was therefore the responsibility of parents and teachers.
[10] From 1914 to 1920, Egerton served with the Gloucestershire Regiment, fighting in the Balkans in World War One,[11] He rose from Captain to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, earned a medal for his service.
The anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits welcomed the book for its acceptance of African culture but recommended that the author seek training in anthropology.
[18] The Time Magazine review reported that the book portrayed King N'jiké as a great stabilizing force.
A native, Egerton thought, might characterize the European achievements as roads he "does not care twopence about", schools which produce "a very disgruntled specimen", missions so frail "that, ten years after the departure of the last missionary, there would be no Christianity left", hospitals whose staffs need "all their time to counteract the tendency of the population to decrease under the white man's rule.
The book showed the distinctness of each character by their explicit words and actions, and he felt a translator had no right to mutilate or cut out any of the details of behaviour.
If he had been an English writer, Egerton weent on, he might have avoided these topics or wrapped them in a "mist of words", but he says what he has to say in the "plainest of language".
[24] The publisher, printer, and copyeditor, disagreed over many of these details, but that the passages in Latin were supplied by a now unknown scholar, not by Egerton himself.
Egerton, he says, aimed at a "smooth English version without omitting the difficult passages" while also preserving the "spirit of the Chinese," but he left out much.