Dream of the Red Chamber (1791): Cao Xueqin's Great Qing Novel

Dream of the Red Chamber (Hongloumeng), also known as The Story of the Stone, is the most celebrated novel of classical Chinese literature. Written by Cao Xueqin in the mid-eighteenth century and circulated in manuscript, it was first printed in a 120-chapter edition in Beijing in 1791. Its portrait of a great family’s decline made it a defining work of Qing China.

Background: the Cao family

Cao Xueqin (c. 1715–c. 1763; his birth year is uncertain and some scholars prefer 1724) came from a family of Chinese bondservants attached to the Manchu imperial household. His great-grandfather, grandfather and other relatives held the lucrative post of imperial textile commissioner at Nanjing for decades. His grandfather Cao Yin was a confidant of the Kangxi Emperor and hosted him on several of his southern tours.

The family’s fortune did not last. In 1728, under the Yongzheng Emperor, the Caos were dismissed and their property was confiscated, apparently over debts and political suspicion. The family moved to Beijing, and Cao Xueqin spent his later years in reduced circumstances on the city’s western outskirts.

Writing and the manuscripts

Cao Xueqin worked on the novel for about ten years, revising it repeatedly. During his lifetime and after, it circulated as handwritten copies under the title The Story of the Stone (Shitou ji). These manuscripts contain commentary by a reader who signed himself Zhiyanzhai, “Red Inkstone Studio”, apparently a relative or close friend who knew the author and the family history.

The surviving manuscripts, known by dates such as 1754 and 1760, contain no more than 80 chapters. Notes in the commentary suggest Cao Xueqin had planned or drafted later sections, but these were lost. He died around 1763 or early 1764, leaving the work unfinished.

The first printed edition of 1791

In 1791 the publisher Cheng Weiyuan and the scholar Gao E issued a complete version of 120 chapters in Beijing, printed with movable wooden type. It is usually called the Cheng-jia edition. A revised version, the Cheng-yi edition, followed in 1792. Cheng Weiyuan claimed in his preface to have gathered the missing chapters bit by bit from collectors and to have edited them with Gao E.

The editors also smoothed and altered the text of the first 80 chapters, and they dropped the Zhiyanzhai commentary. As a result, readers for well over a century knew the novel mainly in this revised form. Only in the twentieth century did scholars return systematically to the surviving manuscripts to recover Cao Xueqin’s own wording.

This printed text spread the novel far beyond the circles that had owned manuscripts. Its ending, in which Baoyu passes the civil service examinations and then renounces the world, became the version most readers knew.

The story

The novel opens with a mythical stone left over when the goddess Nüwa repaired the sky. The stone is reborn as Jia Baoyu, heir of the Rongguo branch of the noble Jia family in the capital. Baoyu prefers poetry and the company of girls to Confucian study.

Most of the action takes place in the Grand View Garden, built for a family daughter who has become an imperial consort. Baoyu’s love for his frail, brilliant cousin Lin Daiyu is thwarted when the family arranges his marriage to the sensible Xue Baochai. Around them move more than 400 characters, from the formidable Grandmother Jia and the capable manager Wang Xifeng to servants, actors and nuns. The household slides into debt, scandal and ruin.

The authorship debate

In the 1920s the scholar Hu Shi argued that the novel was based closely on Cao family history and that Gao E had written the last 40 chapters. This view was dominant for decades. Many scholars now think Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan more probably edited and completed surviving fragments, possibly including material by Cao or others, rather than writing the ending from scratch. The question remains open.

Legacy

Dream of the Red Chamber is counted among the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, alongside Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin and Journey to the West. Its psychological depth, many-voiced dialogue and detailed picture of elite life have drawn comparisons with the greatest European novels. Like the Tale of Genji in Japan, it is regarded as a national masterpiece.

The novel has inspired operas, paintings, films and television series. A full English translation by David Hawkes and John Minford appeared in five volumes between 1973 and 1986.

Timeline

• 1728: The Cao family loses its posts and property.
• c. 1740s–1750s: Cao Xueqin writes and revises the novel.
• 1754: Date of the earliest manuscript tradition with Zhiyanzhai commentary.
• c. 1763–1764: Cao Xueqin dies, leaving 80 chapters.
• 1791: Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E print the 120-chapter edition.
• 1792: A revised printed edition appears.
• 1921: Hu Shi publishes his study of the novel’s authorship.

Why it matters

The 1791 printing turned a privately circulated manuscript into a shared national classic. Dream of the Red Chamber offers a unique window on family life, religion, gender and wealth in eighteenth-century China, and it remains central to Chinese culture and education today.