The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian's Legacy

"Questioning the received understanding of the Letter's nature, authorship, and its relation with the Shiji, this volume, based on solid scholarship and scrupulously referenced, will become a must-read for anyone interested in the study of Sima Qian and the Shiji. It also serves as a most welcome reminder of the necessity to periodically re-evaluate well-established perceptions of literary traditions with a critical eye."—Yangruxin Liu, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

"The 'Letter' comes alive in this joint endeavor. This rich volume sheds much new light on early Chinese manuscript and epistolary culture, Han dynasty political ideology and social ethics, traditional Chinese views of authorship, and, last but not least, our understanding of Sima Qian as a seminal writer, thinker, and historian."—Yiqun Zhou, author of Festivals, Feasts, and Gender Relations in Ancient China and Greece

"A fascinating, in-depth exploration of Sima Qian's 'Letter to Ren An' and the first monograph to give this most celebrated letter of the Chinese tradition the attention it deserves. If the 'Letter' is the lens through which Shiji has been read for two millennia, the four original contributions collected here direct our attention to this lens itself. Scrutinizing it with regard to authenticity, authorship, friendship, and dissent, they illuminate these aspects on a much broader scale."—Antje Richter, author of Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China