Essays of a Recluse - (Translations from the Asian Classics) by Fu Wang

About the Book

Assailing corruption, misrule, and neglect of the common people, Wang Fu's Essays of a Recluse (Qianfulun) offers a rare outsider view of culture, society, and government during the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 CE).

Book Synopsis

Under the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 CE), a self-described recluse wrote a series of essays denouncing the evils of his time. Assailing corruption, misrule, and neglect of the common people, Wang Fu's Essays of a Recluse (Qianfulun) offers a rare outsider view of culture, society, and government during this period. This book presents the first full English translation of the Qianfulun, one of the most significant works to survive from the Eastern Han period.

Wang's essays range across moral philosophy, cosmology, education, military affairs, and conflict in the borderlands. The essays decry governmental corruption and rampant litigiousness, as well as the callous neglect of the poor and the exploitation of women. To remedy these failures, Wang Fu calls for heeding the wisdom of the classics and implementing procedures for recruiting worthy officials. His focused interest in the common people and sensitivity to their travails make Essays of a Recluse a rich source of information about daily life during the Eastern Han period, providing insights into folk religion, divination, marriage practices, and the legal system. Widely admired in his lifetime, Wang's essays were later singled out by Han Yu (768-824 CE) as one of the three great works of the period. Anne Behnke Kinney and John S. Major's expert translation makes an important but notoriously complex and difficult work accessible to a range of English-language readers.

Review Quotes

Wang Fu was a most distinguished and interesting writer and thinker, and Qianfulun is an important source for both the philosophy and the history of his time. This new and complete translation will be valuable to all students of early China.--Rafe de Crespigny, Australian National University

This is a gem: a complete translation of Wang Fu's searing and comprehensive indictment of how Eastern Han society has betrayed its Confucian ideals. By physically separating passages written in parallel prose from those in a looser contemporary style, the translators masterfully display the sophisticated texture and logic of the work.--Keith Knapp, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina

Wang Fu was an impassioned critic of the social and political order of his day, especially irate at the obstacles faced by those without connections to the powerful. By translating Wang Fu's wide-ranging essays, Kinney and Major bring much needed attention to this important observer of life in second century China.--Patricia B. Ebrey, University of Washington

About the Author

Wang Fu (ca. 85-162 CE) was a scholar who lived on the western frontier of the empire during the Eastern Han dynasty. Said to be the son of a low-ranking concubine, he never held an official government post. The Qianfulun is his only surviving work.

Anne Behnke Kinney is professor of Chinese at the University of Virginia. She is translator of Exemplary Women of Early China: The Lienü zhuan of Liu Xiang (Columbia, 2014), among other books.

John S. Major, formerly professor of history at Dartmouth College, is an independent scholar. He is cotranslator of The Huainanzi (Columbia, 2010), among other books.