Talyer&Braithwaite / -

The Good Book Guide, recipient of the Queen's Award for Export Achievement in 1981, is an independent magazine which selects and reviews outstanding books. All the books included in the Guide are automatically stocked in our London warehouse for sale through the Guide's mail order service to readers all around the world. We also syndicate selected reviews to a number of British and overseas magazines.

ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA / -

Pre-modern East Asian historical writing was almost invariably official. Thus, in China, from the 7th century onwards, committees of historian compiled, from court records, a definitive account of individual reigns; in contrast, a private account of history lived through could be construed as an act of lèse-majestè_. Similar Condition prevailed in Korea. In such circumstances it is remarkable that a private memoir such as this could have survived at all; when we consider that it was written by someone close to the centre of political power, and that furthermore this someone was actually a woman, its exceptional nature is readily appreciable.

FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW / -

On both sides of the demilitarised zone which divides the North and South, modern Korean culture has a strongly formalistic side verging on the severe. The careful attention to correct- ness in ideology and behaviour is in part traceable to the neo-Confucian traditions of the Yi dynasty (from 1392 until the country was annexed by Japan in 1910). But despite the formalistic side of their culture, the Korean people remain among the most individualistic in East Asia, highly expressive and emotional, and at times disarmingly straightforward even to Western sensibilities.

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH / December 22, 1985

ASIA WEEK / -

In 1796, at the age of 60, Lady Hong of the Hyegyŏng Palace in Seoul began to write her memoirs, she completed the task in 1807, eight years before her death. This volume is a rare surviving work by a woman of the Yi Dynasty (1392-1910) and written in Han'gŭl, the Korean phonetic alphabet. (virtually all extant literature from the period is in Chinese, composed by Korean men well versed in the Chinese classics.) As Memoirs is a vital account of Korean court life, excerpts have been included in the nation's secondary-school textbooks since Korea's liberation from Japanese rule in 1945.

SOUTH / -

Lady Hong's jewel of a book deserves to become a classic. She was born into an impoverished aristocratic family in 1735. At the age of eight she entered the royal court as the bride chosen for crown prince Sado, bearing him two children before she was 18.

The Guardian / -

Lady Hong's jewel of a book deserves to become a classic. She was born into an impoverished aristocratic family in 1735. At the age of eight she entered the royal court as the bride chosen for crown prince Sado, bearing him two children before she was 18.

CHOICE / -

Lady Hong apparently wrote this remarkable account of an 18th-century family tragedy in the Yi court in her twilight years to explain the circumstances of the "Imo Incident" to then-ruling King Chongjo.  In her memoirs, Lady Hong tells how the relationship between her late husband, Crown Prince Sado, and his father, King Yongjo, was poisoned first by Yongjo's inattention to his son's development and later by the King's frank expressions of dislike for his heir

Los Angeles Times / December 31, 2000

The title of Lady Hong's "Memoirs of a Korean Queen" may be slightly misleading; the lady was wife to the crown prince of Korea in the mid-18th century and mother to the next king, but her unfortunate husband never reigned as king. 

Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism / May 12, 2008