A robust trade in human lives thrived throughout North China during the late Qing and Republican periods. Whether to acquire servants, slaves, concubines, or children—or dispose of unwanted household members—families at all levels of society addressed various domestic needs by participating in this market. Sold People brings into focus the complicit dynamic of human trafficking, including the social and legal networks that sustained it. Johanna Ransmeier reveals the extent to which the structure of the Chinese family not only influenced but encouraged the buying and selling of men, women, and children.
For centuries, human trafficking had an ambiguous status in Chinese society. Prohibited in principle during the Qing period, it was nevertheless widely accepted as part of family life, despite the frequent involvement of criminals. In 1910, Qing reformers, hoping to usher China into the community of modern nations, officially abolished the trade. But police and other judicial officials found the new law extremely difficult to enforce. Industrialization, urbanization, and the development of modern transportation systems created a breeding ground for continued commerce in people. The Republican government that came to power after the 1911 revolution similarly struggled to root out the entrenched practice.
Ransmeier draws from untapped archival sources to recreate the lived experience of human trafficking in turn-of-the-century North China. Not always a measure of last resort reserved for times of extreme hardship, the sale of people was a commonplace transaction that built and restructured families as often as it broke them apart.

The Ming–Qing dynastic transition in seventeenth-century China was an epochal event that reverberated in Qing writings and beyond; political disorder was bound up with vibrant literary and cultural production. Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature focuses on the discursive and imaginative space commanded by women. Encompassing writings by women and by men writing in a feminine voice or assuming a female identity, as well as writings that turn women into a signifier through which authors convey their lamentation, nostalgia, or moral questions for the fallen Ming, the book delves into the mentality of those who remembered or reflected on the dynastic transition, as well as those who reinvented its significance in later periods. It shows how history and literature intersect, how conceptions of gender mediate the experience and expression of political disorder.
Why and how are variations on themes related to gender boundaries, female virtues, vices, agency, and ethical dilemmas used to allegorize national destiny? In pursuing answers to these questions, Wai-yee Li explores how this multivalent presence of women in different genres provides a window into the emotional and psychological turmoil of the Ming-Qing transition and of subsequent moments of national trauma.

一、本卷所录现代中国小说理论资料，起1897年，终1916年。
一、录范围包括论文、序跋、杂评、笔记、书信、讲演辞、专著等。长篇选文则适当节录。
一、选录重点，一是与此一期重要的作家、作品有关的材料；二是小说杂志发刊词；三是对西方小说的介绍及对传统小说的重估。
一、此时期小说作者、论者，大都注重于小说开通民智、改良社会的功效，论旨大体接近；而此时期小说艺术形式与技巧的演变，虽不自觉，但更可注意。
一、所录材料去取比例，大致前较繁，后较简。以其时间在前，论者不多，弥足重视；时间渐后，人能言之，选择宜精。
一、卷末附《18978-1916年中国小说理论资料编目》。

本书是“贺麟全集”之一种，收入了贺麟先生译自斯宾诺莎的两部重要代表作——《伦理学》和《知性改进论》。《伦理学》写于1662—1675年，1677年出版。全称为《用几何学方法作论证的伦理学》。书中系统阐述了作者的唯物主义自然观、认识论和伦理学，认为神或自然是唯一的实体，思维和广延是它的两个属性，一切物理和精神现象都是表现实体属性的样式；认为由感觉和记忆得到的知识是错误的原因，而推理和直观得到的知识必然是真的。书中论述了他的哲学、伦理学所要达到的目的及途径：通过理智克制情感对人的奴役而达到自由，进而达到对神的理智的爱。
《知性改进论》是斯宾诺莎关于方法论和认识论的著作。这书大约是他在1661年冬天到1662年春天所写的。这是一本未竟之作。虽未完成，却仍然是一篇可以告一段落的、内容丰富的独立的论文，并且可以当作他的中心著作《伦理学》的导言来看。作为方法论来看，本书是斯宾诺莎在这一段期间认真学习和研究培根的《新工具》（1620年初次出版）和笛卡尔的著作，特别是他的《方法谈》（1937年初次出版）所提示的方法问题的继承、发展与批判。书中探讨寻求知识的途径和方法，指出真理相实在的系统一贯性，并力图把十七世纪发展起来的新的力学和数学的精神推广应用到研究存在的认识的整个领域。