C.T. Hsia

Born in February 1921 in Wuxian, Jiangsu province, C.T. Hsia was a student at Peking University before he went to the USA in 1947, where he read English at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in 1951. Between 1952 to 54, he was a researcher at Yale, and started his work in the history of modern Chinese literature. He taught in Peking University, Michigan State University, New York State University and Pittsburgh State University, and in 1969 was appointed Professor of Chinese in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. At his retirement in 1991 he was appointed Emeritus Professor of Chinese.

In 1962, Hsia published his groundbreaking work A History of Modern Chinese Fiction. This was followed in 1971 by another tour-de-force, The Classic Chinese Novel. He also co-edited Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949. and has published several volumes of criticism and essays in Chinese. C.T. Hsia is a founding member of the Renditions Advisory Board. His translations of stories in the Gujin xiaoshuo and Jingshi tongyan are in Renditions Nos. 2 and 23.

While C.T. Hsia is known primarily as a literary critic rather than a literary translator, many of his seminal works on Chinese literature contain substantial translation work. Among them is The Classic Chinese Novel: a Critical Introduction, which had a formative influence on American sinology. The exhibits here are taken from the translations in this title.

Major Publications:

  • Twentieth-century Chinese Stories. New York : Columbia University Press, 1971.
  • A History of Modern Chinese Fiction. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971; Bloomington:
       Indiana University Press, 1999.
  • The Classic Chinese Novel: a Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press,
       1968; Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1980, c1968.
  • Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949. New York: Columbia University Press,
       1981.

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