The Dragon Empress: Life and Times of Tz'u-hsi 1835-1908 Empress Dowager of China

Description

From 1861 to 1908 a woman - the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi, born the daughter of a minor mandarin - held the supreme power in China. Opportunist, ruthless, malicious, she ruled over 400 million people. This biography explores her complex personality - her extreme conventionalism, her hatred of "foreigners", her passion for power and intrigue, her vanity and her delight in ritual, her extravagance and corruption, and her love of gardens, painting and the theatre. The book also portrays a China in rapid decline, as poverty, civil war and foreign exploitation and invasion brought about the fall of the Ch'ing dynasty. Since this, her first book, was first published in 1972, the author has written novels and other non-fiction works on images of women, iconography and art. They include "Joan of Arc: the Image of Female Heroism", "Alone of All Her Sex: the Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary", "The Lost Father" (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize) and "Indigo".

Marina Warner was born in London of an Italian mother and an English father. Her history and criticism has focused mainly on female symbolism - Alone of All Her Sex: the Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary; Joan of Arc: the Image of Female Heroism; Monuments and Maidens: the Allegory of the Female Form - and is currently finishing a study of fairytale, called From The Beast to The Blonde. She has also written novels. The Lost Father was a Regional Winner of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and winner of the Macmillan Silver P.E.N Award. She has recently published The Mermaids in the Basement her first collection of short stories. She lives in London with her husband, the artist John Dewe Mathews, and one son.