In eighteenth-century China, the beautiful orphan Daiyu leaves her home in the provinces to seek shelter with her mother's family in Beijing. At Rongguo Mansion, she is drawn into a world of sumptuous feasts, silken robes, and sparkling jewels—as well as a complex web of secret rivalries and intrigues that threatens to trap her at every turn. When she falls in love with Baoyu, the family's brilliant, unpredictable heir, she finds the forces of the family and convention arrayed against her, and must risk everything to follow her heart. Based on the epic Dream of the Red Chamber—one of the most famous love stories in Chinese literature—this novel recasts a timeless tale for Western audiences to discover.

Dream of the Red Chamber is one of the four Chinese classics. The novel is semi-autobiographical and it gives an incredibly detailed insight into 18th-century life in China, particularly that of the aristocracy. The plot is grand in scale, peopled with a complex array of characters.

This exquisite edition of A Dream of Red Mansions features a rare set of Qing Dynasty paintings by Sun Wen. This collector's edition features a complete set of Sun Wen's 230 paintings in splendid color, printed on fine paper. Condensed text from the original novel accompanies each of the paintings and offers a wonderful insight and a brief summary of each of the 120 chapters. This rare edition will be a keepsake for many generations, and is perfect for gift-giving and presentations. The original paintings are presently preserved in Lvshun Museum, Dalian, China.

One of the Four Main Classical Novels of China, A Dream of Red Mansions is the only novel to address the role of women in China’s history. This tragic romance is brought to life with the delicate penstrokes of local artist Seraphina Lum, in her debut graphic novel.

Annotation A classic of modern world literature, this collection of stories provides a vivid eyewitness view of everyday life in China during the Cultural Revolution. For this edition, the text has been thoroughly revised and updated to Pinyin romanization. A new introduction reflects on the book's significance in the post-Tianamen era.

Surprisingly little has been written in Western languages about the eighteenth- century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber, perhaps the supreme masterpiece of its entire tradition. In this study, Andrew H. Plaks has used the conceptual tools of comparative literature to focus on the novel's allegorical elements and narrative structure. He thereby succeeds in accounting for the work's greatness in terms that do justice to its own narrative tradition and as well to recent advances in general literary theory. A close textual reading of the novel leads to discussion of a wide range of topics: ancient Chinese mythology, Chinese garden aesthetics, and the logic of alternation and recurrence. The detailed study of European allegorical texts clarifies the directions taken by comparable works of Chinese literature, and the critical tool of the literary archetype helps to locate the novel within the Chinese narrative tradition from ancient mythology to the more recent "novel" form. Professor Plaks' innovative use of traditional criticism suggests the levels of meaning the eighteenth-century author might have expected to convey to his immediate audience. This book provides not only an illuminating analysis of this important novel, but also a significant demonstration that critical concepts derived primarily from Western literary models may be fruitfully applied to Chinese narrative works. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.