Rewriting Early Chinese Texts examines the problems of reconstituting and editing ancient manuscripts that will revise—indeed "rewrite"—Chinese history. It is now generally recognized that the extensive archaeological discoveries made in China over the last three decades necessitate such a rewriting and will keep an army of scholars busy for years to come. However, this is by no means the first time China’s historical record has needed rewriting. In this book, author Edward L. Shaughnessy explores the issues involved in editing manuscripts, rewriting them, both today and in the past.

The book begins with a discussion of the difficulties encountered by modern archaeologists and paleographers working with manuscripts discovered in ancient tombs. The challenges are considerable: these texts are usually written in archaic script on bamboo strips and are typically fragmentary and in disarray. It is not surprising that their new editions often meet with criticism from other scholars. Shaughnessy then moves back in time to consider efforts to reconstitute similar bamboo-strip manuscripts found in the late third century in a tomb in Jixian, Henan. He shows that editors at the time encountered many of the same difficulties faced by modern archaeologists and paleographers, and that the first editions produced by a court-appointed team of editors quickly prompted criticism from other scholars of the time. Shaughnessy concludes with a detailed study of the editing of one of these texts, the Bamboo Annals (Zhushu jinian), arguably the most important manuscript! ever discovered in China. Showing how at least two different, competing editions of this text were produced by different editors, and how the differences between them led later scholars to regard the original edition—the only one still extant—as a forgery, Shaughnessy argues for this text’s place in the rewriting of early Chinese history.

"The author is one of the few American scholars equipped to address these issues at a level beyond platitudes. His knowledge of the field is impressive: the notes refer to what must amount to hundreds of specialized studies, almost all of them by Chinese scholars and many in journals that are difficult to find in the United States. This is by far the best-documented discussion of these problems in any language." - Paul R. Goldin, author of After Confucius: Studies in Early Chinese Philosophy

夏含夷（Edward L. Shaughnessy），美国汉学家，芝加哥大学教授。

1952年生于宾夕法尼亚州赛维克立镇（Sewickley）。

1970年进入圣母大学（University of Notre Dame），以宗教学为专业。

1974年毕业以后，曾在台湾留学三年，随爱新觉罗‧毓鋆学习三玄。

回国以后，进入斯坦福大学（Stanford University）东亚语文系，1980年获硕士学位，1983年获博士学位，博士论文题目为“《周易》的编纂”。

1985年受聘为芝加歌大学东亚语文系助教授，之后一直在芝加哥大学作教，1997年晋升为顾立雅（Greel）中国古史名誉教授。

研究范围：中国上古文化史、古文字学、经学、《周易》。

主要著作：《西周史料：铜器铭文》（1991），《易经：马王堆帛书易经第一英文翻译》（1996），《孔子之前：中国经典的创造研究》（1997），《温故知新录：商周文化史管见》（台北：稻禾出版社，1997），《古史异观》（2005），《重写中国古代文献》（2006），编辑《中国古代新史料：阅读铭文与写本的指南》（1997），与鲁惟一（Michael Loewe）合编《剑桥中国古代史》（1999）。