Cao Xueqin’s Dream of the Red Chamber, perhaps China’s greatest novel, is published

Story: 1791 C.E.  |  Last updated: January 1, 1791

Nearly three decades after its author’s death, a manuscript that had been quietly circulating among scholars and collectors in hand-copied form finally reached the printing press. In 1791 C.E., editors Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan published the first printed edition of Dream of the Red Chamber — completing, debating, and in some ways reimagining one of the most psychologically rich works of fiction ever written in any language.

Key facts

• Dream of the Red Chamber: Cao Xueqin began composing the novel in the 1740s C.E. and worked on it until his death in 1763 or 1764 C.E., leaving a manuscript of 80 chapters that circulated in hand-copied form among a growing circle of readers.
• Cheng-Gao edition: The 1791 C.E. printed edition, compiled by Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan, added 40 chapters to complete the novel to 120 chapters — chapters whose authorship scholars have debated for more than two centuries.
• Baihua prose: Written in vernacular Chinese rather than Classical Chinese, the novel’s dialogue used the Beijing Mandarin dialect, which in the 20th century C.E. became the foundation of modern standardized spoken Chinese.

A novel born from loss

Cao Xueqin came from a family that had once held enormous prestige under the Qing dynasty — his ancestors served the Manchu emperors in powerful roles. By the time Cao was writing, that world was gone. His family’s fortunes had collapsed, and he lived in relative poverty in Beijing.

That fall is the engine of the novel. Dream of the Red Chamber traces the decline of the aristocratic Jia family across roughly 120 chapters, weaving together hundreds of characters — many of them women. Cao himself said the book was intended as a memorial to the women he had known in his youth: friends, relatives, servants. Their intelligence, creativity, and suffering run through every chapter.

The novel’s emotional core is the doomed relationship between the sensitive, poetic Baoyu and his cousin Lin Daiyu. But that love story sits within a frame story drawn from Taoist and Buddhist cosmology: a sentient Stone, left over from the goddess Nüwa’s mending of the heavens, is given a chance to experience mortal life. The reader follows the Stone’s human incarnation through beauty, loss, and ultimate renunciation.

Hand-copied and beloved before it was printed

Before 1791 C.E., Dream of the Red Chamber existed only as handwritten manuscripts. At least 12 independent surviving manuscripts are known to scholars today. These circulated first among Cao’s personal friends, then among a widening circle of readers who paid large sums on the open market for copies.

Some of those manuscripts contain marginal annotations in red or black ink from readers who signed only with pen names. The most prominent, known as Zhiyanzhai, appears to have had intimate knowledge of Cao’s intentions — possibly a family member. These annotated versions, called “rouge manuscripts,” are considered the most textually reliable. The Shanghai Museum holds the earliest known manuscript, the “Jiaxu manuscript,” dating to 1754 C.E.

Cao died — in 1763 or 1764 C.E. — without finishing the novel. Whether he destroyed the ending chapters, left drafts that were later incorporated, or intended the story to end at chapter 80 remains one of the great unsettled questions of Chinese literary history.

The 1791 C.E. publication and its controversies

When Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan published the first printed edition in 1791 C.E. under the title Illustrated Dream of the Red Chamber, they claimed to have assembled the final 40 chapters from Cao’s own working manuscripts. A second corrected edition followed in 1792 C.E.

Scholars have argued about those 40 chapters ever since. In 1921 C.E., the influential intellectual Hu Shih argued they were written by Gao E himself, pointing to contradictions between the foreshadowing in chapter 5 and the way events unfold in the printed ending. In 2014 C.E., a data-analysis study of writing styles provided “convincing if not irrefutable evidence” that the first 80 and last 40 chapters were written by two different authors. In 2020 C.E., the president of the Society of the Dream of the Red Chamber concluded that while the authorship of the last 40 chapters is uncertain, it is unlikely Gao E wrote them.

The question remains open. What is not in dispute is that the 120-chapter Cheng-Gao edition became the version the world came to know.

Lasting impact

Dream of the Red Chamber did not just become China’s most celebrated novel — it became a field of study. Redology, the academic discipline devoted to the novel, has produced generations of scholars analyzing its text, history, and cultural meaning. Its characters and storylines have been adapted into operas, television series, films, and plays across the centuries.

The novel’s linguistic legacy is equally profound. Because it was written in the Beijing Mandarin vernacular rather than Classical Chinese, early 20th century C.E. lexicographers used the text to help establish the vocabulary of modern standardized Chinese. Reformers cited it as evidence that written vernacular could carry the weight of serious literary art — a position that helped shape the language revolution of that era.

The novel’s psychological depth also stands apart. Its observation of inner life, social dynamics, and the aesthetics of High Qing China gives it a density that rewards re-reading. Scholars have compared it to Proust for its attention to memory, and to Tolstoy for its scope. It holds a central place in the Four Great Classic Novels of Chinese literature — and many readers and critics place it first among those four.

Blindspots and limits

The novel as most people know it is not entirely Cao Xueqin’s — it is Cao filtered through two editors whose interventions remain only partially understood. The voices of the women Cao said he was memorializing are mediated through a male author writing within the constraints of Qing dynasty society, and the manuscript history has gaps that may never be filled. Redology continues to recover what it can, but the original ending, if it ever existed in complete form, appears to be lost.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Wikipedia — Dream of the Red Chamber

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