C. T. Hsia on Chinese Literature. By C. T. Hsia. [New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 544 pp. £26.50. ISBN 0-231-12990-4.]

First impressions matter when buying a book; they are less important when chasing up a reference in a library or following a reading list to a book shop. C.T. Hsia on Chinese Literature is a serious tome which looks like a biography – a bust portrait of the octogenarian author smiles out of a stark black and white dust jacket, and the playful title leaves ambiguous whether it is C. T. Hsia or his thoughts we are buying. One of the delights of reputation and seniority is the publication of a lifetime's collected essays. This produces a gift to the reader which takes its rightful place as a history of criticism as well as literary criticism, gathering 16 essays published between 1962 (in The China Quarterly) and 1990, a volume for celebration. As undergraduates of modern Chinese literature, we used to groan when C. T. Hsia appeared on reading lists, as much because the works containing the essays were dog-eared, smelly old volumes, as for their polemicism. Publication in a smart, single volume presents easy access and allows the essays to be contemplated for their merit and range. Since C. T. Hsia has been considered, as Patrick Hanan writes, “without question the most influential critic of Chinese fiction since the 1960s,” his essays remain important reading matter.