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It is a somewhat surprising fact that the most popular book in the whole of Chinese literature remained unpublished for nearly thirty years after its author’s death, and exists in several different versions, none of which can be pointed to as definitively ‘correct’.
From 1763, the year in which Cao Xueqin died, until the appearance of the first printed edition in January 1792,1 The Story of the Stone circulated in manuscript copies, at first privately, among members of the Cao family and their friends, and then more widely, as copies began to find their way on to bookstalls at the temple markets of Peking. One such copy was bought in 1769 by a future Provincial Judge who happened to be staying in Peking at the time to sit for an examination. It was published in Shanghai in a somewhat garbled form a century and a half later . . .
Cao Xueqin (1715?–63) was born into a family which for three generations held the office of Commissioner of Imperial Textiles in Nanking, a family so wealthy that they were able to entertain the Emperor Kangxi four times. But calamity overtook them and their property was confiscated. Cao Xueqin was living in poverty near Peking when he wrote his famous novel The Story of the Stone, of which this is the first volume. The four other volumes, The Crab-Flower Club, The Warning Voice, The Debt of Tears and The Dreamer Awakes, are also published in Penguin Classics.
David Hawkes was Professor of Chinese at Oxford University from 1959 to 1971 and a Research Fellow of All Souls College, from 1973 to 1983. He now lives in retirement in Wales.
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