本书是一部关于宋代女词人李清照的研究专著。作者在古今浩繁的相关资料中爬梳抉择，经过严密的分析论证，认为后人对李清照一代才女形象的认知和看待她的立场经历了层累性的改变，几乎所有关于李清照的惯常言论都是经过精心阐释的产物，只有经过传统这一棱镜的折射后，李清照才为正统文化所接受。后人为了强化她的传统形象，在明代结集的李清照的作品中，甚至混杂了后起的拟伪之作。作者将数世纪以来外加于李清照的累赘层层剥离，以重构一个接近本来面貌的李清照的形象，揭橥数世纪以来颇富趣味的李清照接受史。

Widely considered the preeminent Chinese woman poet, Li Qingzhao (1084-1150s) occupies a crucial place in China’s literary and cultural history. She stands out as the great exception to the rule that the first-rank poets in premodern China were male. But at what price to our understanding of her as a writer does this distinction come? The Burden of Female Talent challenges conventional modes of thinking about Li Qingzhao as a devoted but often lonely wife and, later, a forlorn widow. By examining manipulations of her image by the critical tradition in later imperial times and into the twentieth century, Ronald C. Egan brings to light the ways in which critics sought to accommodate her to cultural norms, molding her “talent” to make it compatible with ideals of womanly conduct and identity. Contested images of Li, including a heated controversy concerning her remarriage and its implications for her “devotion” to her first husband, reveal the difficulty literary culture has had in coping with this woman of extraordinary conduct and ability. The study ends with a reappraisal of Li’s poetry, freed from the autobiographical and reductive readings that were traditionally imposed on it and which remain standard even today.