The Story of the Stone: A Translator’s Notebooks (Facsimile Edition) – David Hawkes‘s Handwritten Notes, 1970–1979

This is the story behind the story — how China’s greatest novel reached English readers.

David Hawkes was a professor of Chinese at Oxford. He resigned his post to spend a decade translating the first eighty chapters of The Story of the Stone (Honglou Meng / Dream of the Red Chamber). His translation is still widely regarded as the definitive English version.-17

This book is a photographic reproduction of the notebooks and drafts Hawkes kept while he was translating. There are four notebooks in total. Three are dated, spanning November 1970 to June 1979. The fourth is undated, containing notes on the poems in the novel and translation drafts.-16-17

What you’ll find inside:

• How he worked through the rhythm and meaning of classical Chinese poetry, line by line

• His creative solutions for translating names, colors, and Chinese medicine terms — the hardest cultural elements to carry across

• Drawings he made to help himself translate objects, ornaments, and dominoes described in the novel

• His beautiful traditional Chinese handwriting — a glimpse of the depth behind a Western scholar’s mastery-17-20

Who is this for?

• Readers of Dream of the Red Chamber who want to see how the novel looks in English and what choices the translator made

• Translation students and scholars — this is primary source material, described as the “black box” of a master translator’s process-25

• Anyone interested in how Chinese literature travels — what it really takes for a classic to be embraced by English readers

• Collectors — this is a limited collector’s edition: leatherette with gold stamping, printed on 80g imported paper, with a limited-edition bookmark included-17-21

Important note: This is not the novel itself. It is not the English translation. It is a reproduction of David Hawkes’ working notebooks and drafts — written in traditional Chinese handwriting plus English. It is not meant to be an easy read; these were private notes Hawkes made for himself.