Biographies of Exemplary Women

The first book in China devoted entirely to women. The Han scholar Liu Xiang compiled the lives of more than a hundred women, mothers, wives, daughters and concubines of rulers and commoners, and arranged them as models of maternal rectitude, wisdom, chastity, eloquence and discernment, along with a final chapter of vicious and depraved women who ruined states. Here are Mencius's mother moving house three times for her son's education, the wife who argues her husband out of folly, the girl who saves her father from punishment by writing to the emperor. The stories are short, dramatic and full of strong voices. This complete new English translation covers the whole collection with its preface. Names are given in modern pinyin, offices and titles are rendered plainly, and the narrative runs as continuous English prose, so the book can be read straight through by anyone curious about China's past, not only by specialists.