A History of Chinese Literature is Herbert Allen Giles’s historical survey of Chinese writing from its early beginnings onward. It presents major periods, authors and genres, often through translated passages that let Chinese writers speak for themselves. It offers readers a broad, readable introduction to a long and varied literary tradition.
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Cover of the original edition (Project Gutenberg, public domain).
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
A HISTORY OF
CHINESE LITERATURE
BY
HERBERT A. GILES, M. A., LL. D. (AœŧǡŠ.)
PROFESSOR OF CHINESE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
AND LATE H. B. M. CONSUL AT NINGPO
colophon
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1927
CLjǙΏǡƗƄƒǵ, 1901,
BΏ D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
Printed in the United States of America
PREFACE
This is the first attempt made in any language, including Chinese, to produce a history of Chinese literature.
Native scholars, with their endless critiques and appreciations of individual works, do not seem ever to have contemplated anything of the kind, realising, no doubt, the utter hopelessness, from a Chinese point of view, of achieving even comparative success in a general historical survey of the subject. The voluminous character of a literature which was already in existence some six centuries before the
Christian era, and has run on uninterruptedly until the present date, may well have given pause to writers aiming at completeness. The foreign student, however, is on a totally different footing. It may be
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