SOURCE: Introduction to Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, Boni and Liveright, 1925, pp. xi-xxiii.

A highly regarded English sinologist, Giles, through his numerous lectures and publications in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was instrumental in conveying the rich variety of Chinese culture to the English-speaking world. In 1880 Giles translated and published Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, the first and most extensive translation of P'u's Liao-chai chih-i. In the following introduction, originally written in 1908, Giles comments on P'u's stature in Chinese literature. In his text Giles also includes a 1679 essay by P'u and an 1842 essay by T'ang Mênglai.

The barest skeleton of a biography is all that can be formed from the very scanty materials which remain to mark the career of a writer whose work has been for the best part of two centuries as familiar throughout the length and breadth of China as...