What different types of historical sources on women are available to scholars of early, middle, and late imperial China? What can these sources tell us, both about women's lives and gender ideologies? This edited volume of bibliographic essays on historical sources for Chinese women's history, the first of its kind, attempts to answer these questions, with eighteen contributions from an international group of scholars. Arranged chronologically, most of the essays focus on textual sources, while three deal with visual or material sources. Beyond serving as a useful bibliographic guide, the greatest impact of this collective endeavor is to remind present and future gender scholars that a wealth of Chinese historical sources await exploration, ripe for new avenues of creative scholarship.

Several essays survey canonical textual collections, such as the standard dynastic histories or portions of the Qing dynasty Sikuquanshu (Complete collection of the four treasuries), highlighting sections with rich concentrations of materials related to women or gender ideologies. Other essays examine specific genres of male-authored historical sources featuring women as historical subjects, such as epitaphs from the Han to the Tang dynasties, Qing dynasty gazetteers, fiction, biographical recollections, poetry collections, or periodicals. A handful of essays on early imperial sources examine specific texts as sources for women's history, such as the Shijing (Book of odes), or the Ishinpo, a Japanese compilation drawing heavily on pre-Tang dynasty Chinese medical works.

The strongest of these essays speak to broader audiences by virtue of providing a comprehensive orientation to a single genre of historical sources, or through the conscious modeling of how to think through complex gender issues, such as the question of the female voice. A fine example of the first approach can be found in Yi Jo-lan's essay on the standard histories, which fully acknowledges their biases and limitations, yet also provides a thoughtful and clear-eyed analysis of how they shed light on women's social status, gender divisions, and institutional roles. An inspired example of the second approach can be found in Hu Ying's essay on late Qing women's calligraphy, one of the few contributions to touch on material culture. Rather than assuming that gender as a category is automatically significant in women's calligraphy, Hu turns the question on its head to ask, “Is there gender in calligraphy?” (p. 436), pinpointing different moments when gender matters most, and when it does not.

The primary weakness of this volume is its lack of an editorial introduction. Instead, “in lieu of an introduction” (p. 1), the editor offers another bibliographic essay on where to find sources related to women within the sibu classification system (the traditional four-part division of classics, history, philosophy, and literary works). Unfortunately, without any guiding introductory remarks, readers will be inclined to tackle only those chapters that seem most relevant to their own work, by dint of chronology or subject matter, thereby missing the spark of imaginative connections that only a consideration of such a volume in its entirety can provide. An editorial introduction might have highlighted any number of possible comparative themes. In what ways, for example, have women been used as ethical or educational role models in a range of Chinese historical sources? Or, does a comparison between historical sources addressing women's roles in imperial families and literati families offer any new insights into the family dynamics of either group? Questions of this kind are raised by other scholars in the epilogue, but these brief concluding remarks do not lessen the need for a thoughtful overview of the collection at its start.

Without a larger explanatory framework, readers are left to wonder why “Chinese women” are used as the organizing rubric for this book, rather than “gender.” Doing so implies an essential coherence and self-evident purpose in highlighting “sources for Chinese women's history,” with the historian's role as that of finding (female) needles within a larger (male) haystack of historical sources. However, as Dorothy Ko points out in her concluding remarks, “the constructed nature, if not artificiality, of the category of ‘woman’ is the most salient message” (p. 575) that a reader might gain from this volume. One could argue that identifying historical sources about Chinese women is a necessary first step before contemplating gendered histories, but instead, the editor dubs this a “methodological” issue (p. 579), to be taken up by other scholars. To this end, the volume includes a bibliography of recent Chinese and English assessments of women's, feminist, and gender history in China, making a fantastic reading list for graduate students and gender scholars alike. This volume will appeal to both audiences, and would make an excellent addition to graduate-level historical methodology seminars.