Early imperial China was comparable to the better studied Song and Ming-Qing transition periods in defining the role of Chinese women in government and society. The creation of imperial institutions and the attendant philosophic, economic, and social changes led to a fundamental transformation in the place of women. Symptomatic of these broader developments was the changing status of palace women in particular.

Empresses and Consorts begins with a critical overview of developments in thought and institutions affecting palace women from earliest times through the Han, and shows how attitudes changed over time. The core of the book is a meticulous and richly annotated translation of the three fascicles of Chen Shou's (233-297) Records of the Three States (San guo zhi) devoted to palace women.

Here rendered into English for the first time, these chapters provide important insights into the worlds of palace women and court politics, while revealing much about the lives of upper-class women in general at the close of the third century.