Abstract |
A copy of the wooden movable-type edition of Dream of the Red Chamber iscollected at the National Taiwan University Library, published by Cui-Wen Publisher in the late Qianlong era. The NTU copy has 12 chapters in 24 volumes which are kept in four cases. It begins with a foreword by Cheng Weiyuan (Xiaochuan)and is then followed successively by a preface by Gao E, a list of contents, somepictures with poems, and then the main text. There are a number of handwrittenpages, including the foreword, the preface, page 10 recto of chapter 3 to page 1recto of chapter 4, and also page 1 of chapter 9. In comparison with the reprintedcopies of the authentic Cheng's Version A and Cheng's Version B published by beijingLibrary Press, we have found that in the copy at NTU, chapters 1 to 3 are a mixture of both versions: chapters 4 to 30, 91 to 115 and 117 to 120 are Version A,chapters 31 to 90 and 116 are Version B. Moreover, the list of contents and certainfeatures or wordings in several pages are neither identical to those in Version A norVersion B.
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