Ellen Widmer, The Beauty and the Book: Women and Fiction in Nineteenth-Century China, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, April, 2006.
魏爱莲：《红颜与书籍：19世纪中国的妇女与小说》，坎布里奇：哈佛大学出版社，2006年4月。
作者：
Ellen Widmer (魏爱莲) is Professor of Chinese Literature at Wesleyan University.
Women entered the book trade in significant numbers in China during the late sixteenth century, when it became acceptable for women from "good families" to write poetry and seek to publish their collected poems. At about the same time, a boom in the publication of fiction began, and semiprofessional novelists emerged.
This study begins with three case studies, each of which probes one facet of the relationship between women and fiction in the early nineteenth century. It examines in turn the prefaces written by four women for a novel about women; the activities of a woman editor and writer of fiction; and writings on fiction by three leading literary women. Building on these case studies, the second half of the book focuses on the many sequels to the Dream of the Red Chamber--one of which was demonstrably written by a woman--and the significance of this novel for women. As Ellen Widmer shows, by the end of the century, women were becoming increasingly involved in the novel as critical readers, writers, and editors. And if women and their relationship to fiction changed over the nineteenth century, the novel changed as well, not the least in its growing recognition of the importance of female readers.
妇女大量进入书籍流通领域是在16世纪晚期，当时，出身名门的女子吟咏诗歌并寻求出版诗选渐为社会所接受。差不多在同时，开始了小说出版的一个繁荣期，半职业化的小说家也大量涌现。
本研究以三项个案研究为始，力求每一个案都能展现19世纪早期妇女与小说之间关系的一个侧面。书中依次考察了四位妇女为一本闺阁小说所作的序言；小说女性编者和作者的活动以及三位女性文坛领袖的小说创作。在这些个案研究基础之上，该书第二部分着力关注了《红楼梦》一书的多种续篇——其中一种确实成于女性之手——以及该书对于女性的重要意义。诚如魏爱莲所示，到19世纪末叶，女性日益成为小说的批判性读者、作者和编者。如果说女性与小说之间的关系在19世纪发生了变化，最好说是与长篇小说之间的关系发生了变化，而不仅仅是妇女读者的重要性日渐被得到承认。
Contents
1. Introduction: From the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century
Part I. Contiguities: Women, Fiction, and Print Culture Circa 1830
2. The Women of Jinghua yuan
3. Hou Zhi and "Women's Tanci"
4. Fiction in Three Prominent Women's Lives
5. Fiction as Women's Literature: The View Circa 1830
Part II. Continuities: Honglou meng ying in Its Nineteenth-Century Setting
6. Honglou meng ying Sequels and Their Female Readers
7. Honglou meng Sequels and Their Female Readers
8. Women, Publishing, and Late Qing Literary Currents
Afterword: Women and the "Rise of the Novel" in China
Appendices
A. Three Generations of Women
B. Three Poems in Translation
Notes
Bibliography
Index
PS：最后一句怎么翻，结构都搞不清楚。