Synopses & Reviews
Spence shows himself at once historian, detective, and artist. . . . He makes history howl.” (The New Republic)
Award-winning author Jonathan D. Spence paints a vivid picture of an obscure place and time: provincial China in the seventeenth century. Life in the northeastern county of Tan-cheng emerges here as an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry, and heavy taxation. Against this turbulent background a tenacious tax collector, an irascible farmer, and an unhappy wife act out a poignant drama at whose climax the wife, having run away from her husband, returns to him, only to die at his hands. Magnificently evoking the China of long ago, The Death of Woman Wang also deepens our understanding of the China we know today.
Review
"In previous publications Spence has given us valuable information on the life of the literate elite and on the court during the Ch'ing dynasty. With this book, he turns his attention to a much more difficult problem, the evocation of the enduring hardships, and fleeting joys, of the common folk. His focus is on a single small county, T'an-ch'eng, in northeastern China. By drawing on the local history of the county, the memoirs of a disgraced magistrate who remained in T'an-ch'eng, and the imaginative writings of a famed literatus of a neighboring district, Spence weaves a vivid tapestry of 17th-century peasant life, with special attention to the plight of women. The result of thorough-going scholarship, the book is written with an eye to the general reader and makes fascinating reading. A small, but not insignificant, masterpiece." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
Praise for The Death of Woman Wang:
“Whether judged as fiction or as historical reconstruction, [this] is a masterpiece of style and narration.”
—Harold Bloom
“An unforgettable book of historical re-creation.”
—The New Republic
Synopsis
Spence shows himself at once historian, detective, and artist. . . . He makes history howl. (The New Republic)
Award-winning author Jonathan D. Spence paints a vivid picture of an obscure place and time: provincial China in the seventeenth century. Life in the northeastern county of T an-ch eng emerges here as an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry, and heavy taxation. Against this turbulent background a tenacious tax collector, an irascible farmer, and an unhappy wife act out a poignant drama at whose climax the wife, having run away from her husband, returns to him, only to die at his hands. Magnificently evoking the China of long ago, The Death of Woman Wang also deepens our understanding of the China we know today."
About the Author
Jonathan Spence's eleven books on Chinese history include The Gate of Heavenly Peace, Treason by the Book, and The Death of Woman Wang. His awards include a Guggenheim and a MacArthur Fellowship. He teaches at Yale University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
One: The Observers
Two: The Land
Three: The Widow
Four: The Feud
Five: The Woman Who Ran Away
Epilogue: The Trial
Notes
Bibliography