Robert van Gulik bibliography

Judge Dee

Judge Dee mysteries in order written and published

• Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, translation of the Chinese Dee Goong An (1941–1948)
• The Chinese Maze Murders (written 1950, published in Japanese in 1951, published in English in 1956)^[1]
• The Chinese Bell Murders (written 1953–1956, published 1958)
• The Chinese Lake Murders (written 1953–1956, published 1960)
• The Chinese Gold Murders (written 1956,^[2] published 1959)
• The Chinese Nail Murders (written 1958,^[2] published 1961)
• New Year's Eve in Lan-Fang [1958; separately published short story in 200 copies as a New Year's gift from van Gulik]
• The Haunted Monastery (written 1958–1959,^[2] published 1961)
• The Red Pavilion (written 1958–1959,^[2] published 1961)
• The Lacquer Screen (written 1958–1959,^[2] published 1962)
• The Emperor's Pearl (1963)
• De Nacht van de Tijger (1963), written in Dutch, short story, as "The Night of the Tiger" included in The Monkey and the Tiger
• Vier vingers (1964), written in Dutch as Boekenweekgeschenk (= present for the Week of the Book); short story, as "The Morning of the Monkey" included in The Monkey and the Tiger
• The Monkey and the Tiger, two short novels (1965)
• The Willow Pattern (1965)
• Murder in Canton (1966)
• The Phantom of the Temple (1966)
• Judge Dee at Work, short stories (1967)
• Necklace and Calabash (1967)
• Poets and Murder (1968)

Judge Dee mysteries in internal order

Van Gulik's autograph in Chinese

Judge Dee at Work contains a "Judge Dee Chronology" telling of Dee's various posts, in which van Gulik places the mysteries—both books and short stories—in the context of Dee's career and provides other information about the stories. On the basis of this chronology, the works can be arranged in the following order:

• 663 – Judge Dee is a magistrate of Peng-lai, a district on the northeast coast of China.
  • The Chinese Gold Murders
  • "Five Auspicious Clouds", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
  • "The Red Tape Murders", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
  • "He Came with the Rain", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
  • The Lacquer Screen
• 666 – Judge Dee is the magistrate of Han-yuan, a fictional district on a lakeshore near the capital of Chang-An.
  • The Chinese Lake Murders
  • "The Morning of the Monkey", a short novel in The Monkey and the Tiger
  • The Haunted Monastery (Judge Dee, while traveling, is forced to take shelter in a monastery.)
  • "The Murder on the Lotus Pond", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
• 668 – Judge Dee is the magistrate of Poo-yang, a fictional wealthy district through which the Grand Canal of China runs (part of modern-day Jiangsu province).
  • The Chinese Bell Murders
  • "The Two Beggars", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
  • "The Wrong Sword", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
  • The Red Pavilion
  • The Emperor's Pearl
  • Poets and Murder
  • Necklace and Calabash
• 670 – Judge Dee is the magistrate of Lan-fang, a fictional district at the western frontier of Tang China.
  • The Chinese Maze Murders
  • The Phantom of the Temple
  • "The Coffins of the Emperor", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
  • "Murder on New Year's Eve", a short story in Judge Dee at Work
• 676 – Judge Dee is the magistrate of Pei-chow, a fictional district in the far north of Tang China.
  • The Chinese Nail Murders
  • "The Night of the Tiger", a short novel in The Monkey and the Tiger
• 677 – Judge Dee is Lord Chief Justice in the imperial capital of Chang-An.
  • The Willow Pattern
• 681 – Judge Dee is Lord Chief Justice for all of China.
  • Murder in Canton

Two books, Poets and Murder and Necklace and Calabash, were not listed in the chronology (which was published before those two books were written); both were set during the time when Judge Dee was magistrate in Poo-yang.

Selected scholarly works

• A Blackfoot-English Vocabulary Based on Material from the Southern Peigans, with Christianus Cornelius Uhlenbeck. (Amsterdam, 1934)
• The Lore of the Chinese Lute: An Essay in Ch'in Ideology (1941)
• Hsi K'ang and His Poetical Essay on the Lute (1941)
• Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period (Privately printed, Tokyo, 1951)
• Siddham: An Essay on the History of Sanskrit Studies in China and Japan (1956)
• Chinese Pictorial Art, as Viewed by the Connoisseur (Limited edition of 950 copies, Rome, 1958)
• Sexual Life in Ancient China: A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from ca. 1500 B.C. Till 1644 A.D. (1961). (In spite of its titillating title, this book deals with the social role of sex, such as the institutions of concubinage and prostitution.)
• The Gibbon in China: An Essay in Chinese Animal Lore (Leiden, 1967)