With commentary and annotations throughout, Ming Dynasty Tales: A Guided Reader presents for the first time in English 10 key stories from China's Ming Dynasty era. Casting new light on this significant period in Chinese literary history, these tales bring Ming era China vividly to life, from its chaotic beginnings to its imperial heyday.

As well as bearing witness to social change across the 100-year life of the Yuan Dynasty from 1260 to 1368, these tales tackle key themes of war and peace and Confucian values of loyalty, filiality, chastity, and righteousness.

This collection provides careful translations and in-depth readings of Ming-dynasty classical tales, a genre that has been neglected heretofore. Edited by two well-known scholars in the field of traditional fiction, it should convince readers that this neglect has been more the result of the linguistic difficulty of these tales than their intrinsic merits. * William H. Nienhauser, Jr., Halls-Bascom Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin, USA *

Victor H. Mair is Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Zhenjun Zhang is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Asian Studies Program at St. Lawrence University, uSA