Dream of the Red Chamber · Chronicle
The Story of the Stone
also known as Dream of the Red Chamber; Honglou meng
A stone, copied by a Taoist; Cao Xueqin as editor
The history of a sentient stone, left over from the repairing of the sky, that begged to see the world of red dust — copied off its own surface and read, in our world, as the great novel of a declining house.
Cervantes found an Arabic history in Toledo. Cao Xueqin found a stone.
The leftover block from Nüwa’s repair of the sky is the only object in this catalogue that is both the protagonist and the book. Baoyu lives; the stone records; a Taoist copies; an editor in the Qing dynasty takes the blame and the credit. Hawkes, translating, put The Story of the Stone on the English spine so that the frame would not be a preface you skip. He was right. The Rongguo garden is what the stone wanted when it asked to see the red dust. The novel is what it cost.
This is why it belongs with Cide Hamete and the Red Book, not with the Necronomicon. The fictional chronicle completed the journey into print. What you cannot hold is the inscription on the leftover jade. What you can hold is the house of Jia, in five volumes, which is the whole of the claim.
On the readability rating. Yes — of the transcription. The stone remains at the foot of the mountain, which is to say it remains in the first chapter.
In-world history
Nüwa mends the heavens and has one stone left over. The stone is given life, sent down, and lives as Jia Baoyu in the Rongguo house. A monk and a Taoist find the inscription of that life on the stone itself, at the foot of a mountain. Cao Xueqin, in the frame, works the text; Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan print it. What you hold is the transcription. What you cannot hold is the stone.
Why it matters
The Chinese founding of the found-manuscript. Before Cide Hamete, a stone. The published book insists it is not invented. It is recovered.
Appearances
- Dream of the Red Chamber (1791) — Cao Xueqin Honglou meng; the frame is that the novel is the inscription on a discarded stone, transcribed and edited
Editions in our world
- Honglou meng, Cao Xueqin (Cheng-Gao, 1791, and the manuscript tradition) Presented as the Story of the Stone. There is no stone. The real book is the one that taught Chinese fiction how to pretend a novel had been found — the Red Book arrangement, a century and a half earlier, in another script.
Connected volumes
- Related to The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha · Don Quixote
- Related to The Red Book of Westmarch · Middle-earth
- Related to The Neverending Story · The Neverending Story
Catalogue record
- Category
- Chronicle
- World
- Dream of the Red Chamber
- Imagined by
- Cao Xueqin
- Language
- Chinese
- First appearance
- Cheng-Gao printed edition, 1791; circulating in manuscript earlier
- Readability
- Published in our world
Sources
- Cao Xueqin, Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber / The Story of the Stone), Cheng-Gao edition 1791; English translation by David Hawkes and John Minford (Penguin, 1973–86), which restores the stone frame in the title.
Added by house · last checked 2026-09-06