SUSAN MANN. The Talented Women of the Zhang Family. (A Philip E. Lilienthal Book in Asian Studies.) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2007. Pp. xvi, 322. $21.95

Abstract

In her new book, Susan Mann builds on her long engagement with educated women in Qing-period China. Her earlier, prize-winning Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century (1997) dealt with subjects ranging from the ways the state shaped gender ideologies to women's work and religious piety. Women's writings were treated as precious, since they provided direct access to their authors' thoughts and feelings, but much of the material in the book came from works written by men. In her new study, Mann narrows her focus to a single family, in which women poets appeared for three generations in a row, and draws a large share of her material from their writings. The first of the talented women was Tang Yaoqing (1763–1831), who married into the Zhang family of Changzhou, in the center of China's prosperous Jiangnan region. Yaoqing had four daughters—Zhang Qieying, Guanying, Lunying, and Wanying—all of whom became proficient poets and three of whom remained at home after marrying, living as a joint family with their one surviving brother, who in time arranged the publication of their poetry. These uxorilocally married daughters also had daughters who were given literary educations, the most notable of whom was Wang Caipin (1826–1893).