Early Modern Chinese Women Writers

This entry introduces women’s education and writing in both scholar gentry families and the pleasure quarters in the affluent southeast Yangzi River Valley region from the late sixteenth to late seventeenth century, the period known as the Ming–Qing transition. It reviews social and technological changes of this pivotal moment that had a profound impact on women’s writing culture for the remainder of the imperial period in China. Four women and their writings—one courtesan and three gentry women—are presented as noteworthy case studies.