Colonel Sir Henry Yule KCSI CB FRSGS (1 May 1820 – 30 December 1889) was a Scottish Orientalist and geographer.

He published many travel books, including translations of the work of Marco Polo and Mirabilia by the 14th-century Dominican Friar Jordanus.

(Neale co-founded the Society of Saint Margaret, an order of women in the Church of England dedicated to nursing the sick, while Goodwin became Bishop of Carlisle.)

Yule's stay at Papworth Everard ended in 1826 when Challis was appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy and moved to the Observatory in Cambridge.

In this he was unsuccessful but he became fascinated by the region and wrote an account of its people,[7] including the first written description of their living root bridges.

In 1842 he was transferred to a team of engineers led by Captain (later General) William Baker charged with the construction of irrigation canals.

He was appointed to a committee charged with investigating the relationship between irrigation by the proposed Ganges Canal and its impact on public health in the area.

He published Cathay and the Way Thither (1866), and the Book of Marco Polo (1871), for which he received the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society the following year.

Yule remarried in 1877, his new wife Mary Wilhelmina (died 26 April 1881) the daughter of a Bengal civil servant, Fulwar Skipwith.

[14] For the Hakluyt Society, Yule edited the Mirabilia Descripta (1863), a translation of the travels of the 14th century Friar Jordanus,[15] and The Diary of William Hedges (3 vols, 1887–89).

Yule's most popular work, compiled with Arthur C. Burnell, was the Hobson-Jobson (1886), a historical dictionary of Anglo-Indian words and phrases which continues to provide an insight into the language used in British India.

Yule died at his home at 3 Penywern Road, Earls Court, London, on 30 December 1889 aged 69, and is buried at Tunbridge Wells.