# The Dragon Empress

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/marina-warner/the-dragon-empress

![The Dragon Empress](https://quivercdn.com/covers/vintage/marina-warner/the-dragon-empress_978-00-9916-591-0.jpg?v=2026-04-22%2004%3A16%3A05)

- Authors: [Marina Warner](https://www.bookquiver.com/marina-warner)
- Language: en_GB
- Published: 1993-07-15

## 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. 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.

## Editions

### The Dragon Empress

- Publisher: Vintage
- ISBN: 978-00-9916-591-0
- Pages: 272
- Published: 1993-07-15
- Language: en_GB