Alison Hardie holds degrees in Classics from the University of Oxford and in Chinese from the University of Edinburgh, and a doctorate in the history of Chinese garden design from the University of Sussex. Her main research interest is in the social and cultural history of early modern China. She is the translator of Ji Cheng's 17th-century garden manual, "The Craft of Gardens" (1988, repr. 2012), and revised the 3rd edition of Maggie Keswick's "The Chinese Garden: History, Art and Architecture" (2003). She has published many translations and articles on Chinese garden history for both academi...