David B. Honey was born in El Paso Texas, but grew up in Southern California. Graduating from UCLA in 1980, he earned his MA (1984) and PhD (1988) degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1987, he has taught classical Chinese and Chinese literature at Brigham Young University where he was honored as the Humanities Professor of Chinese from 2020 through 2022. His major publications reflect variegated research interests. The Rise of the Medieval Hsiung-nu: The Biography of Liu Yuan (1990), Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology (2001), a work composed in Chinese, Xifang jingxueshi gailun (A Short History of Classical Scholarship in the West) (2012), and The Southern Garden Poetry Society: Literary Culture and Social Memory in Guangdong (2013) all represent these ancillary interests. A Chinese translation of Incense at the Altar is currently in press. Professor Honey's main research commitment is represented by this publication of the first three volumes of a projected five-volume set titled A History of Chinese Classical Scholarship.

Vols. one (2018) and two (2019) have appeared in Chinese translation by Social Sciences Academic Press, Beijing.