Archibald Little was a man of marked individuality and force of character. The eldest son of a physician, whose name is still honoured throughout Europe and America for his original work in certain branches of surgery and pathology, he was born in the city of London in 1838. After a few years at Saint Paul's School, he had the good fortune to be rescued from the purely classical education to which all public schools then condemned their scholars, and was sent when fourteen years old to Berlin. There he not only learnt German thoroughly, but also received a sound general education and acquired methodical habits which stood him in good stead all his life.

During the close on fifty years spent in China, varied by frequent visits to England, the following pages were written. The two Plays have not before been published, nor two other chapters, that on Missionaries, and the other largely dealing with the same subject, but entitled Confucianism. Of the others several have appeared in the North-China Herald and other periodicals in China, whilst Western China, Ex Oriente Lux, Two Cities, The Value of Tibet, The Partition of China, The Dangers of the Upper Yangtse, and The Chinese Drama have appeared respectively in the Quarterly and North American Reviews, the Fortnightly, Spectator, Asiatic Quarterly, Geographical Journal and Nineteenth Century.