The volume under review is based on the papers presented at the conference “Traditional Chinese Women through a Modern Lens” held at Harvard University in June 2006. Its publication marks an important milestone in the study of late imperial Chinese women. Read together with the two previous volumes of collected essays on this same topic, Writing Women in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), edited by Ellen Widmer and Kang-i Sun Chang, and Chinese Women in the Imperial Past (Leiden: Brill, 1999), edited by Harriet Zurndorfer, this most recent volume is a testament to the impressive strides that have been made in rediscovering late imperial women's writings, reflecting how much the field has evolved during the last decade.
Quite a few books on pre-modern Chinese women have in their titles the term “inner quarters” or “inner chambers” (guige, the confined domestic space where women from...
