'The Dream of the Red Chamber ' Summary

Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou Meng) or The Story of the Stone (Shitou Ji), composed by Cao Xueqin, is one of Chinese literature's Four Great Classical Novels. It was written in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing dynasty. The novel is believed to be semi-autobiographical, mirroring the rise and decline of author Cao Xueqin's own family and, by extension, of the Qing dynasty.

As the author details in the first chapter, it is intended to be a memorial to the women he knew in his youth: friends, relatives and servants. The novel is remarkable not only for its huge cast of characters and psychological scope, but also for its precise and detailed observation of the life and social structures typical of 18th-century Chinese society.Its pages contain a sampling of all of the major modes of the Chinese literary tradition. Long considered a masterpiece of Chinese literature, the novel is generally acknowledged to be one of the pinnacles of Chinese fiction.

The novel circulated in manuscript copies with various titles until its print publication, in 1791. Gao E, who prepared the first and second printed editions with his partner Cheng Weiyuan in 1791–92, added 40 chapters to complete the novel, but it is still controversial whether they composed these chapters or they were Cao's own. The title has also been translated as Red Chamber Dream and A Dream of Red Mansions. "Redology" is the field of study devoted to this work.