4 volumes, overseas customers please note that as a multivolume set, the item will attract additional postage.Volume 1, 2, and 4 are immaculate apart from an ownership signature on the front end paper and appear unread. Volume 3, which also carries the ownership signature, is sadly damaged at the head: from page 83 to page 154, and again from page 377 to page 385, plus the back end papers the head is bumped. It progresses with increasing severity, beginning with a mild bump, a crease, then with a short closed tear.The damage is to the very top of the page and does not affect the print. Apart from these pages, the remainder of Volume 3 is in excellent condition. "Jin Ping Mei .....translated into English as The Plum in the Golden Vase or The Golden Lotus-is a Chinese novel of manners composed in vernacular Chinese during the latter half of the sixteenth century during the late Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The author took the pseudonym Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng, "The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling," and his identity is otherwise unknown (the only clue being that he hailed from Lanling County in present-day Shandong). The novel circulated in manuscript as early as 1596, and may have undergone revision up to its first printed edition in 1610. The most widely read recension, edited and published with commentaries by Zhang Zhupo in 1695, deleted or rewrote passages important in understanding the author's intentions. The explicit depiction of sexuality garnered the novel a notoriety akin to Fanny Hill and Lolita in English literature, but critics such as the translator David Tod Roy see a firm moral structure which exacts retribution for the sexual libertinism of the central characters.[6] Jin Ping Mei takes its name from the three central female characters-Pan Jinlian (???, whose given name means "Golden Lotus"); Li Ping'er (???, literally "Little Vase"), a concubine of Ximen Qing; and Pang Chunmei (???, "Spring plum blossoms"), a young maid who rose to power within the family. Chinese critics see each of the three Chinese characters in the title as symbolizing an aspect of human nature, such as mei (?), plum blossoms, being metaphoric for sexuality." (Wikipedia)