Admirers of the monumental original edition of Victor H. Mair's Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature have long clamored for a shorter, more affordable version. In response, Columbia University Press now offers an abridged volume, which, like the original, includes selections of Chinese literature from the beginnings to 1919. This shorter anthology retains the characteristics of the original in that it is arranged according to genre rather than chronology and interprets "literature" very broadly to include not just literary fiction, poetry, and drama, but folk and popular literature, lyrics and arias, elegies and rhapsodies, biographies, autobiographies and memoirs, letters, criticism and theory, and travelogues and jokes. It also contains fresh translations by newer voices in the field.Acclaim for The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature:"Innovative, talented, lively, and splendidly readable." -- Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society"The list of translators reads like a Who's Who of Western sinology. This is a book one can open at any page and immediately be drawn in by its great and appealing content. It is at once a reference book, with examples drawn from the huge corpus of Chinese literature, and a book which guarantees superb reading pleasure." -- New Asia Review"A lifetime spent reading Chinese literature has produced this enormous, enthralling, canon-exploding book.... Often, the funniest and liveliest entries are translated by the editor himself, who has an uncanny ability to capture puns and rhymes even in English translation.... Wonderful." -- Revue Bibliographique de Sinologie