This guide is an excellent beginning for the study of a little-recognized genre and will be needed by all academic libraries. "Choice"

During the 1970s many distinguished writers began experimenting with the short story cycle, a literary form that achieved prominence in the early decades of the century through such works as James Joyce's "DublinerS" and Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio." Despite the growing interest of both writers and readers, no theoretical work has been done on this genre in the past ten years. "The Short Story Cycle" provides a wide-ranging survey of the subject, offering detailed analyses of nine classic short story cycles and an annotated listing of over 120 others, many by contemporary authors. In addition, the introduction includes a history of the genre and its related forms as well as a discussion of conventions associated with the cycle.

Short story cycles by Joyce, Anderson, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Welty, O'Connor, and Updike are described in individual chapters. These works illustrate the genre's diversity and vitality, ranging from cycles that are explicitly related through chronology, plot, and character to collections that reveal subtler, implicit unities. The author looks at the ways different writers use repeated or developed characters, themes, myth, imagery, setting, point of view, and plot or chronology to create the sense of a larger whole. Chapter bibliographies supply information on relevant critical writings as well as biographical and autobiographical materials. The volume concludes with an annotated listing of important twentieth-century short-story cycles by American, British, European, Canadian, Australian, Polish, Soviet, and Latin American writers.

Each chapter of this collection addresses a problem in Chinese history that is both interesting and important, as well as offering new ideas and interpretations, plus a methodological example that might inspire other scholars. There is a wide temporal span among the chapters, which take in early, medieval, and late imperial China. There is also a broad range of topics covered, including gender, society, archaeology, historiography, demography, intellectual thought, art, science, and technology. One chapter introduces the use of a kind of data completely new to the field of Chinese studies and develops the combination of old and new methods required to make sense of them, and the findings offer new challenges to economic, social, and medical historians. Another chapter invites us to rethink the reasons why "the woman question" emerged so suddenly, and to ask how conditions changed after 1898 to so radically alter views of women's place. Yet another reconsiders the rapid industrialization of Europe in the nineteenth century in light of the slower but equally extraordinary rise of modern Chinese machine-driven industry after 1860. The collective nature of this volume and the variety of its approaches and topics, plus the high quality of each chapter, make it accessible to scholars in a wide range of intellectual fields who may use from one to all chapters.

This first book-length study of gender relations in the Lower Yangzi region during the High Qing era (c. 1683-1839) challenges enduring late-nineteenth-century perspectives that emphasized the oppression and subjugation of Chinese women. Placing women at the center of the High Qing era shows how gender relations shaped the economic, political, social, and cultural changes of the age, and gives us a sense of what women felt and believed, and what they actually did, during this period.
Most analyses of gender in High Qing times have focused on literature and on the writings of the elite; this book broadens the scope of inquiry to include women's work in the farm household, courtesan entertainment, and women's participation in ritual observances and religion. In dealing with literature, it shows how women's poetry can serve the historian as well as the literary critic, drawing on one of the first anthologies of women's writing compiled by a woman to examine not only literary sensibilities and intimate emotions, but also political judgments, moral values, and social relations.
After an introductory chapter that evaluates the historiography of Chinese women, the book surveys High Qing history, charts the female life course, and discusses women's place in writing and learning, in entertainment, at work, and in religious practice. The concluding chapter returns to broad historiographic questions about where women figure in space and time and why we can no longer write histories that ignore them.

This first book-length study of gender relations in the Lower Yangzi region during the High Qing era (c. 1683-1839) challenges enduring late-nineteenth-century perspectives that emphasized the oppression and subjugation of Chinese women. Placing women at the center of the High Qing era shows how gender relations shaped the economic, political, social, and cultural changes of the age, and gives us a sense of what women felt and believed, and what they actually did, during this period.
Most analyses of gender in High Qing times have focused on literature and on the writings of the elite; this book broadens the scope of inquiry to include women's work in the farm household, courtesan entertainment, and women's participation in ritual observances and religion. In dealing with literature, it shows how women's poetry can serve the historian as well as the literary critic, drawing on one of the first anthologies of women's writing compiled by a woman to examine not only literary sensibilities and intimate emotions, but also political judgments, moral values, and social relations.
After an introductory chapter that evaluates the historiography of Chinese women, the book surveys High Qing history, charts the female life course, and discusses women's place in writing and learning, in entertainment, at work, and in religious practice. The concluding chapter returns to broad historiographic questions about where women figure in space and time and why we can no longer write histories that ignore them.

The American Historical Association's Committee on Women Historians commissioned some of the pioneering figures in women's history to prepare essays in their respective areas of expertise. These volumes, the second and third in a series of three, complete their collected efforts. The first volume of the series dealt with the broad them necessary to understanding women's history around the world. As a counterpoint, volume 2 is concerned with issues that have shaped the history of women in particular places and during particular eras. It examines women in ancient civilizations; including women in China, Japan, and Korea; women and gender in south and South East Asia; Medieval women; women and gender in Colonial Latin America; and the history, Susan Mann, Barbara N. Ramusack, Judith M. Bennett. Ann Twinam, and Kathleen Brown. As with volume 2, volume 3 also discusses current trends in gender and women's history from a regional perspective. It includes essays on sub-Saharan African, the Middle East, early and modern Europe, Russian and the Soviet Union, Latin American, and North American after 1865. Its contributors include Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Nikki R. Keddie, Barbara Engel, Asuncion Lavrin, Ellen Dubois, and Judith P. Zinser writing with Bonnie S. Anderson. Incorporating essays from top scholars ranging over an abundance of regions, dates, and methodologies, the three volumes of "Women's History in Global Perspective constitute an invaluable resource for anyone interested in a comprehensive overview on the latest in feminist scholarship.

"This important volume adds a significant number of new and unique materials for teachers at all levels of higher education to use in classroom and seminar discussion about the issues of gender, society, and religion in imperial China."--Benjamin Elman, author of "A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China"

"The eighteen primary documents in this anthology, all of them translated for the first time, provide a rich array of sources on the lives of women in China's past. The anthology is important not only for the selection of documents but for the ways it suggests we can think about, and find sources about, women in China. It is must reading for scholars and students alike."--Ann Waltner, author of "The World of a Late Ming Visionary: T'an-Yang-Tzu and Her Followers"

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 articles, memorabilia - as well as a variety of other historical documents, Mann reconstructs these women's intimate relationships, personal aspirations, values, ideas, and political consciousness. She transforms our understanding of gender relations and what it meant to be an educated woman during China's transition from empire to nation and offers a new view of the history of late imperial women.