The Death of Woman Wang

by Spence, Jonathan D.

• ISBN13: 9780140051216
• ISBN10: 014005121X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1979-03-01
• Publisher: PENGUIN PUTNAM
• More Book Details

Summary

Award-winning author Jonathan D. Spence paints a vivid picture of an obscure place and time: provincial China in the seventeenth century. Life in the northeastern county of T'an-ch'eng emerges here as an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry, and heavy taxation. Against this turbulent background a tenacious tax collector, an irascible farmer, and an unhappy wife act out a poignant drama at whose climax the wife, having run away from her husband, returns to him, only to die at his hands. Magnificently evoking the China of long ago, The Death of Woman Wang also deepens our understanding of the China we know today.

Author Biography

Jonathan Spence (1936-2021):  Was the author of more than a dozen well-regarded books "which illuminate China's vast history through details that illuminated bigger pictures and themes. (The New York Times)" including  The Gate of Heavenly Peace, Treason by the Book, and The Death of Woman Wang. His awards include a Guggenheim and a MacArthur Fellowship. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Preface	xi
The Observers	1	(32)
The Land	33	(26)
The Widow	59	(18)
The Feud	77	(22)
The Woman Who Ran Away	99	(34)
Epilogue: The Trial	133	(8)
Notes	141	(22)
Bibliography	163