Chinese · 1715–1763
Cao Xueqin transformed personal tragedy into China's greatest novel, drawing on his family's fall from imperial favor to create Dream of the Red Chamber. Born into wealth—his family managed the imperial textile manufactories—he experienced dramatic reversal when the Yongzheng Emperor confiscated their property. The novel's portrait of the declining Jia family, centered on the doomed love of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, combines social panorama with Buddhist philosophy and minute observation of aristocratic life. Cao died before completing the work; the final forty chapters were added by Gao E. "Redology," the scholarly study of the novel, is a recognized academic field in China.