Jin Ping Mei (translated into English as The Plum in the Golden Vase or The Golden Lotus) -is a Chinese novel of manners composed in vernacular Chinese during the late Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The author took the pseudonym Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng , \"The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling,\"and his identity is otherwise unknown (the only clue being that he hailed from Lanling County in present-day Shandong). The novel circulated in manuscript as early as 1596, and may have undergone revision up to its first printed edition in 1610. The most widely read recension, edited and published with commentaries by Zhang Zhupo in 1695, deleted or rewrote passages important in understanding the author\'s intentions.The explicit depiction of sexuality garnered the novel a notoriety akin to Fanny Hill and Lolita in English literature, but critics such as the translator David Tod Roy see a firm moral structure which exacts retribution for the sexual libertinism of the central characters. Our copy is the four volume translation by Clement Egerton, first published in 1939. Excellent pages, some edge and jacket wear.