The Chinese Novel at the Turn of the Century

The Chinese Novel at the Turn of the Century is a 1980 book edited by Milena Doleželová-Velingerová, published by the University of Toronto Press. It was the first book that had been written in a Western language that chronicled fiction published in the final 15 years of the Qing Dynasty, from 1897 to 1910.

The book was created by a University of Toronto joint research seminar about late Qing fiction that began in 1971.

The front page of the November 10, 1897 Guowen Bao, a newspaper from Tianjin, is used as the front cover of the book. In that issue, the editors of the paper, Yan Fu (a.k.a. Yen Fu) and Xia Zengyou (C: , P: Xià Zēngyòu, W: Hsia Tseng-yu), posted an announcement that the newspaper's literary supplement was beginning.

The book includes a total of nine essays. The essays discuss critical theories and historical significance of various works. Cordell D.K. Yee's review noted that the conventional viewpoint regarding Qing Dynasty novels was that they were "loosely plotted, consisting of episodes simply strung together." Many of the authors of the pieces in this book argued that previous critics of late Qing Dynasty works, such as Lu Xun and Hu Shi, did not grasp the formal sophistication present in the works. Contributors argue that novels belong to specific organizing principles and discuss the structure of the works. They believe that the authors had a higher consciousness of structure than previous analyses had concluded.

Three essays are included in the first portion of the book. "The Rise of 'New Fiction'", by Shu-ying Tsau discusses essays by Yan Fu, Liang Qichao (Liang Ch'i-ch'ao), and other intellectuals which advocated for fiction that called for modernization, since the authors believed fiction had the ability to influence minds of people. The other essays, "Typology of Plot Structures in Late Qing Novels" and "Narrative Modes in Late Qing Novels," were written by the book's editor. In the first essay she discusses different plot structures in Qing Dynasty novels, including Bizarre Happenings Eyewitnessed Over Two Decades by Wu Jianren (Wu Woyao). Her second essay discusses three narrative modes in the novels.

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