On his retirement Creel was praised by his colleagues as an innovative pioneer on early Chinese civilization, and as one who could write for specialists and general public with cogency, lucidity, and grace.
[1] Amongst his later works, Creel's 1974 translation and study of the Shen Buhai fragments remains unsurpassed as of 2024, making him a highly recalled scholar for the subject of Chinese Legalism.
The most influential of Creel’s books include The Birth of China (1936), the first detailed account of the significance of the archaeological excavations at Anyang, which quickly attracted global interest; Studies in Early Chinese Culture (1937) which was an influential collection of monographic essays; Literary Chinese by the Inductive Method, vols.
[4] From the start of his career in the 1930s, Creel was an outspoken proponent of the theory that Chinese characters are inherently ideographic in nature.
[5] He was opposed by sinologists Peter A. Boodberg and Paul Pelliot, who believed that phonetic principles played a large role in the early history of Chinese characters.