China Qing era saw rise in female authors, poets, despite broad restrictions on women in arts

China Qing era saw rise in female authors, poets, despite broad restrictions on women in arts

From the 18th century onwards, female authors gained unprecedented prominence, from Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters in the West to the rise of significant women writers in Qing-era China (1644–1912). The increasing prominence of female Chinese authors was driven by Dream of the Red Chamber, an 18th-century masterpiece by Cao Xueqin, widely considered the pinnacle of Chinese fiction and one of the four great classical novels of Chinese history. Cao’s book was so important that a cottage...

By Kevin McSpadden