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Cao Xueqin

Original nameCao Xueqin

Author of Dream of the Red Chamber

The Four Great Novels & Their Authors · Chinese Classics
Novel of MannersDream of the Red ChamberQing Dynasty

Who they are

A Qing-dynasty novelist, born into an official family fallen from splendor to ruin, who in poverty and sickness in his later years wrote Dream of the Red Chamber — "ten years of reading and revising, five times rewritten" — dying before it was finished. On the frame of the rise and fall of the Jia household and the blood of the Baoyu–Daiyu love, he wrote out a great family’s fortunes and the fates of a company of young women. It is acknowledged as the summit of the classical Chinese novel, and its depth, breadth, and compassion have, over two centuries, given rise to a discipline of its own — "Redology."

Primary sourcesCao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber

Key stories

A Family’s Rise and Fall in One Book

Cao Xueqin himself lived through his family’s whole descent from silken splendor to confiscation and ruin, and that searing experience is the ground-tone of Dream of the Red Chamber. He wrote not of emperors and generals but of one family’s daily life, one company of young people’s joys and sorrows, and in these fine details caught the whole age’s turn from height to decline. The line "pages full of idle words, a handful of bitter tears" is his own note on his life and this book.

Version differences

The authorship of the last forty chapters of Dream of the Red Chamber is long in doubt (the standard account credits Gao E’s completion), and whether the first eighty are wholly by Cao Xueqin is also discussed; this site states that these "Redology" disputes exist.

Relationships

Created
💎Jia Baoyu🥀Lin Daiyu

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

A discipline of its own — "Redology"Around the authorship, editions, sources, and thought of Dream of the Red Chamber, a discipline of its own — "Redology" — has grown over two centuries, still a leading field of classical Chinese literary study.

Appears in

The Four Summits of the Classical Chinese NovelDream of the Red Chamber: The Summit of the Classical Chinese Novel
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