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Period
221 BCE–1912 CE
Imperial China began with Qin unification in 221 BC and continued through successive dynasties until the fall of the Qing in 1912. The imperial system combined emperors, bureaucracy, Confucian learning, armies, agriculture, cities, trade and repeated cycles of unity and division. Its scale and continuity make it one of the largest historical settings for fiction.
It mattered because dynastic government shaped Chinese culture, law, education, family life and relations with neighbouring peoples for more than two millennia. The period also contains rebellion, court intrigue, invasion, frontier trade and foreign pressure. Fiction can move from palace and examination hall to village, river town, monastery, battlefield and treaty port.
Imperial China supports fiction by Pearl S. Buck, Anchee Min, Lisa See, Robert van Gulik and writers using court, village, merchant and dynastic settings. Detective series, family sagas and court novels can all draw on emperors, mandarins, concubines, scholars, rebels and foreign traders. These pages should connect readers to novels about dynastic change, imperial examinations, palace life, opium, rebellion and the fall of the Qing.
Series
The Under Heaven novels use the invented empire of Kitai to explore two decisive eras of imperial Chinese history. Under Heaven evokes the cosmopolitan splendour and political instability of the Tang dynasty before the An Lushan Rebellion; River of Stars moves four centuries forward to a Song-inspired court…
Books
Bestselling authors first, then star rating.
Non Fiction
Histories, biographies and reference works are listed separately from the historical novels above.
