A Tale of Flowering Fortunes

California: Stanford University Press, 1980. Cloth. Very Good Indeed/Very Good Indeed. 9.5" by 6.5". None. A beautiful and uncommon two volume set translating the journals kept by Japanese aristocrats during the Heian period. Translated and with an introduction and notes by Helen Craig McCullough along with her husband William H. McCullough; both worked in the Department of Oriental Languages at Berkeley, and published many works including scholarly papers, studies and translations.This work marks the first time 'eiga monogatari', an eleventh century chronicle of Japanese aristocracy, has been translated into a Western language. It is an important source of societal life between the mid tenth century to the early eleventh century. With nineteen woodcut illustrations and twenty diagrams.Complete with unclipped dust wrappers. In the publisher's original full cloth binding. Externally very smart, minor bumping to the tail of the spines only, otherwise minor wear. Internally firmly bound, pages are bright and clean bar a pencil inscription to the front endpaper of volume II. Very Good Indeed