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...

First published in 1932, this book is perhaps the earliest work by an American scholar on a Chinese woman intellectual. Nancy Lee Swann presents a sketch of the Eastern Han period when Pan lived and wrote, of her family background, and of the literary milieu of which she was a part. In addition, Swann provides translations of writings definitively identified with Pan that survive from the years when she was active (ca. 89--105 a.d.).
While Pan is well known for her contribution to the great Han-shu, of special interest is her treatise on the moral training of women, in which she makes a...