Essays of a Recluse

Anne Behnke Kinney (PhD, Michigan) is Professor of Chinese in the Department of East Asian Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Virginia. Her publications
include Exemplary Women of Early China: The Lienü zhuan of Liu Xiang (Columbia University Press, 2014), Representations of Childhood and Youth in Early China (Stanford University Press, 2005), and Chinese Views of Childhood (University of Hawai’i Press, 1995). She is the director of the digital research collection, Traditions of Exemplary Women and Book Review Editor for Early China.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.

Patricia B. Ebrey, University of Washington:
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.

Keith Knapp, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina:
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.