Until recently, nineteenth-century Chinese novels had gone understudied. Lu Xun's evaluation of two major genres, courtesan fiction and martial arts novels, led many to dismiss them as artistically inferior or morally suspect. As Chloë F. Starr points out, scholarship in mainland China virtually allowed genre taxonomy to take the place of criticism for such novels, and sustained discussion of individual novels was rare. Since the late 1990s, the courtesan novel has begun to receive serious attention. Red-Light Novels of the Late Qing, the first book-length study of the genre in English, examines six novels from 1840 to 1910: Qinglou meng, Pinhua baojian, Fengyue meng, Huayue hen, Haishang hua liezhuan, and Jiu wei gui. Starr uses the term “red-light novel” rather than “courtesan fiction” to highlight the brothel setting, and because she sees these novels as more about the clients than the courtesans (p. 196). She aims to bring together literary criticism and the history of the book to show that these novels are self-conscious fiction and to demonstrate how varying editions change their reception.

The book consists of a preface and four chapters. “Text and Context” sets the stage, defining “late Qing,” “courtesan,” and “red-light” novels, and sketching the sources of nineteenth-century red-light novels. It then briefly introduces textual studies with reference to the late Qing. “The Narrator Framed” focuses on the construction of the narrator, arguing that “[c]onvoluted relationships between narrator and text, and narrator and implied author, are central to the build-up of levels of fiction in the works” (p. xxiv). “Characterisation in Context” analyzes three novels, concluding that the characters in the nineteenth-century novels fall short of becoming individuated subjects, but characterization becomes more important toward the end of the century. Most of the novels foreground the characters' status as a construct and thereby give the reader “the double consciousness of the mimetic and the synthetic” (p. 189). “Structure: The Textual Representation of Itself” examines how changes in the format of the red-light novels affected their narrative structures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Starr then compares the effects of the rise of the periodical press in China with Victorian England and concludes with a case study of Huayue hen (p. xxv).

One of the strengths of this study is its reassessment of Lu Xun and his overwhelming influence on the assessment of nineteenth-century fiction. The focus on the materiality of the text in the final chapter leads to interesting reflections on the presentation of red-light novels in recent editions from mainland China. The publication of red-light fiction in series labeled by type or period emphasizes categorization, although it does not precisely follow Lu Xun's taxonomy. Starr's careful attention to the material text and its publication history provides insight into the impact of editors on the meaning(s) of the novel. Deletions and changing paratexts reflect particular views of the author and literary history. One only wishes that her discussion of the technology of production and the physicality of the novels at the time of first publication had taken into account Christopher Reed's Gutenberg in Shanghai (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004), as Alexander Des Forges's Mediasphere Shanghai (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007) does for Haishang hua liezhuan.

Starr views the genre as an artifact of editorial practices. She thereby denies red-light fiction the status of a genre, even as she demonstrates its common roots and techniques. This argument serves as a useful critique of how genre labels have been used in China after Lu Xun. However, the novels' debts to the sources cited in chapter 1, their explicit references to other red-light novels, and the similar play of the narrator all suggest that the authors of the red-light novels were writing in a genre.

Like other recent work on courtesan fiction, Starr's book goes beyond Lu Xun. The relationship between narrator, author, and text in the red-light novels has previously been the subject of astute analyses by Alexander Des Forges and Patrick Hanan. Starr's focus on fictionality brings new insights to these questions. Her argument for self-conscious fictionality as a primary concern running across all these novels is original. She ties together narrative and material text while looking backward to the traditions out of which red-light fiction developed and forward to the May Fourth era. This work helps bridge the gap between traditional and modern Chinese literature that has, until recently, left the nineteenth century in “limbo.” Red-Light Novels of the Late Qing challenges the generalities of literary history and promises to inspire further work on the artistry of these novels.