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. Opportunistic, ruthless, malicious, she ruled over four hundred million people. Marina Warner's biography lays bare 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 DRAGON EMPRESS 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.
- ISBN10 1448103169
- ISBN13 9781448103164
- Publish Date 29 February 2012 (first published 26 October 1972)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Vintage Digital
- Format eBook (EPUB)
- Pages 272
- Language English