The Talented Women of the Zhang Family - by Susan Mann (Paperback)

About the Book

"There is absolutely nothing remotely like this book in the history of late imperial women. [An] immensely important book."--Gail Hershatter, author of "Women in China's Long Twentieth Century "
"A masterful work."--Lynn Hunt, coeditor of "Beyond the Cultural Turn "

Book Synopsis

The history of China in the nineteenth century usually features men as the dominant figures in a chronicle of warfare, rebellion, and dynastic decline. This book challenges that model and provides a different account of the era, history as seen through the eyes of women. Basing her remarkable study on the poetry and memoirs of three generations of literary women of the Zhang family--Tang Yaoqing, her eldest daughter, and her eldest granddaughter--Susan Mann illuminates a China that has been largely invisible. Drawing on a stunning array of primary materials--published poetry, gazetteer articles, memorabilia--as well as a variety of other historical documents, Mann reconstructs these women's intimate relationships, personal aspirations, values, ideas, and political consciousness. She transforms our understanding of gender relations and what it meant to be an educated woman during China's transition from empire to nation and offers a new view of the history of late imperial women.

From the Back Cover

"There is absolutely nothing remotely like this book in the history of late imperial women. [An] immensely important book."--Gail Hershatter, author of Women in China's Long Twentieth Century

"A masterful work."--Lynn Hunt, coeditor of Beyond the Cultural Turn

Review Quotes

"[An] elegantly written and produced volume. . . . the first serious effort to move beyond poetic output to detail the lives and background from which this output emerged."-- "Women's Review Of Books" (9/1/2008 12:00:00 AM)

"The hybrid form of The Talented Women of the Zhang Family is new and highly successful. . . . Excellent."-- "Harvard Journal Of Asiatic Stds" (7/13/2010 12:00:00 AM)

"Wonderful . . . . An erudite and important contribution to the social history of nineteenth-century China. Yet it reads almost like a novel."-- "Times Literary Supplement (TLS)" (6/13/2008 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Susan Mann is Professor of History at University of California, Davis, and was president of the Association of Asian Studies 1999-2000. She is the author of Local Merchants and the Chinese Bureaucracy, 1750-1950 (1987) and Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century (1997), which won the Joseph Levenson Prize. She is also coeditor of Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History (UC Press, 2001).