Jing Shen and Robert E. Hegel's A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China is the first English translation of one of Li Yu's 李漁 (1611–1680) chuanqi plays. As one of the few Chinese writers whose work was translated into English as early as the nineteenth century, Li Yu is no stranger to readers of English, although most of his translated works have been in the genre of fiction. As early as 1815, John Francis Davis (1795–1890) translated Li's short story “Tower of Three Dedications” into English. After that, several more translations of Li's fiction were published in the nineteenth century. The late Prof. Patrick Hanan of Harvard made the most significant contribution to furthering Li Yu's reputation among Western readers by publishing his English version of The Carnal Prayer Mat (1990), an erotic novel attributed to Li Yu, as well as selections from Li's short story...

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