Kindle Unlimited
Unlimited reading. Over 4 million titles. Learn more
Read for Free
OR
Kindle Price: $5.99

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

Buy for others

Give as a gift or purchase for a team or group.
Learn more

Buying and sending eBooks to others

  1. Select quantity
  2. Buy and send eBooks
  3. Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs

Follow the author

Lloyd Lofthouse
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

My Splendid Concubine Kindle Edition

by Lloyd Lofthouse (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,441 ratings
See all formats and editions

An outcast foreigner. A quiet lover. The fate of the Far East.

China, 1854. Robert Hart is on the run. Fleeing Ireland to escape a promiscuity scandal, the syphilitic nineteen-year-old arrives in the Middle Kingdom at the height of the Qing Dynasty. And though he buys a woman to share his bed, the libidinous Westerner has no idea she will help him shape the course of a nation.

With the insight into the culture and language his beautiful concubine provides, Hart helps the emperor put down the bloody Taiping Rebellion. And as he fights against scheming Brits and Americans during the Opium Wars, the courageous preacher’s son rises to an unprecedented level of trust within the Chinese royal family.

Widely regarded as the Godfather of Modernization, this is the dramatized tale of Robert Hart’s profound influence on one of history’s greatest empires… and the woman who helped make it possible. With rich detail and deft prose, author Lloyd Lofthouse paints a captivating picture of a man thrust onto the world stage as a result of his passions.

My Splendid Concubine is a breathtaking work of historical fiction based on the unbelievably true story of one political innovator. If you like nineteenth-century statecraft, well-researched narratives, and celebrating little-known pioneers, then you’ll adore Lloyd Lofthouse’s award-winning read.

Buy My Splendid Concubine to dive into the past today!

Previous page
  1. Print length
    641 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publication date
    April 1, 2013
  5. File size
    4579 KB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  9. See all details
Next page
Add a debit or credit card to save time when you check out
Convenient and secure with 2 clicks. Add your card

Editorial Reviews

Review

- PRAISE FOR -
My Splendid Concubine
- 3rd edition -
(formerly The Concubine Saga)

Honorable Mentions in General Fiction
2012 San Francisco Book Festival
2012 New York Book Festival
2012 London Book Festival

"Drawing on heavily researched passages with great dramatization, The Concubine Saga is a strong pick for historical fiction collections, highly recommended." - The Midwest Book Review, July 2012

Our Hart, Elegy for a Concubine, the sequel to
2nd edition of My Splendid Concubine

"Our Hart is a unique and entertaining read, recommended."
- Midwest Book Review, April 2010

"Fine and tightly controlled Novel" - Historical Fiction Society, May 2010

"Political intrigue and matters of the heart are both fully explored. ... readers who enjoy vicariously experiencing other times and cultures will find Our Hart a fascinating journey." - Commentary of a Writer's Digest judge, April 2011

2nd edition of My Splendid Concubine
"A powerful novel whose beauty exceeds that of the book's cover."
- Commentary of Writer's Digest judge, April 2009

1st edition of My Splendid Concubine

"Packed cover to cover with intriguing characters and plot, a must read for history fans and a fine addition to any collection on the genre." - Midwest Book Review, May 8, 2008

"A stunning work that enmeshes imperialism, modernity, miscegenation and plain old desire in a sweaty matrix of destruction and painful birth." - City Weekend Magazine, May 8, 2008

"Those who are interested in unconventional romances with an out-of-the ordinary setting will find plenty to enjoy." - Historical Novel Society, May 2008

About the Author

Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Running with the Enemy. His short story, A Night at the Well of Purity was named a finalist in the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards.

His wife is Anchee Min, the author of Red Azalea (1992), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her novel the Empress Orchid (2004) was a finalist for the British Book Awards and her memoir, The Cooked Seed, was chosen by Amazon editors as one of the best books of 2013.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00578UNLG
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Three Clover Press (April 1, 2013)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 1, 2013
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 4579 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 641 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,441 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Lloyd Lofthouse

Lloyd Lofthouse

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, who worked as a maître d’ in a 15 million dollar nightclub for a few years. He also taught English literature in the public schools for most of 30 years where he explored Romeo and Juliet with thousands of high school students.

A romantic at heart, in his award winning novels, he tests true love in difficult situations and the challenges of keeping that love alive. My Splendid Concubine, his first novel, is an epic love story that teaches acceptance and respect for other people and their cultures. Running with the Enemy, his second novel, is a love story that will either cost the characters their lives or will complete each other’s hearts. The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova, his third novel, is the story of a man raised in a world of sin and seduction, who craves the love of one woman but fears, because of his infamous reputation as a libertine, that he’ll never find a woman to love who will trust him to be faithful.

Lloyd Lofthouse lives in California’s San Francisco Bay area.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
1,441 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

David C. Hay
5.0 out of 5 stars A historical romance--with both good history and good romance.
Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2017
Verified Purchase
From the title, you can expect a racy romance. Yes, that’s there. But more than that you get an interesting piece of history that most of us in the west know nothing about. China in the 19th century was a mystery to westerners, and those who visited were very clumsy and offensive to the Chinese.

An exception was a young Irishman named Robert Hart. From college, he got a job as an interpreter in the consulate in a suburb of Shanghai. He had learned some Chinese in college, but he took the job seriously and set out not only to master the various dialects, but also to master its culture, history, and arts. As a consequence, he was a master diplomat in a very trying environment, and the Chinese royalty appreciated his talents well beyond what might be expected. Ultimately, he not only reformed their customs practices (removing most of the corruption and bribes involved), but also established schools, the post office, and the railroads.

He was the single largest force for modernization of China in that era.

He’d been promiscuous in Ireland, and he left partly from embarrassment about that. On the other hand, when he encountered Chinese customs of treating women as servants to be used and thrown away, he was shocked and found it difficult to adapt. In that setting, he did find one concubine who stole his heart. He involvement with her and her sister is at the heart of this novelization of his life.

The book is a wonderful combination of an informative history of a truly exotic place, and a touching romance. The author does an outstanding job of presenting Chinese culture and history, the problems with its encounters with the West, and a very personal story of a young man exploring new worlds--both in geography and in personal life.
6 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Denny
4.0 out of 5 stars Informative and moving
Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2016
Verified Purchase
This is a remarkable story. What a wonderful way to learn about China in the mid nineteenth century, a time that encompassed the opium wars, the attempted colonisation of China by the world powers of the day,mand the modernisation of China. Yet it manages to deliver as a romance as well.

Robert Hart played a leading role in China at this time and it was moving to read this historical novel within the context of his love for a concubine. With great power comes great sacrifice and he devoted himself to the Chinese people who rewarded him with power and tesponsibilities that no other westerner has ever had in China.

The author explains much of the spiritual and cultural values of this ancient civilisation. A huge effort has been made to research the era and it is something of a scholarly work as well as a romance. It makes for sobering reading for anyone interested in geopolitics and the global influence that China will have on the twenty first century. China takes a long term strategic view and has learnt a lot from those nations that sought to exploit it in the nineteenth century.

Thoroughly recommended. I would have given it five stars but for some patchy writing especially in the beginning. Five out of five for characterisation and for making this period of history accessible and colourful.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Joanna D.
5.0 out of 5 stars Like "Shogun" but set in Imperial China. REALLY GOOD!
Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2014
Verified Purchase
This was a huge surprise--Lloyd Lofthouse's novel about Robert Hart and Imperial China right after the Opium Wars is fascinating, dramatic and it's almost impossible to believe it was based on a real character because it reads like a blockbuster novel. Robert Hart, the main character was called the "Godfather of China's modernism." He arrived in China almost as a soldier of fortune, and ended up as a completely fluent, trusted advisor to the Chinese court and the British, having learned perfect Chinese but more importantly, the intricacies of the culture.

This book is a lot like "Shogun"--in fact, if you liked "Shogun", you'll probably enjoy this book. The themes are similar; an unbathed, barbaric Westerner becomes enchanted with the local women, falls in love, is repelled and confused by an alien culture, but immerses himself so deeply in the ways China that he becomes able to navigate the twisted channels and treacherous waters of Chinese diplomacy and court life. Instead of Japan. Bushido and the Tokugawa Shogunate, we have here the China's Qing Dynasty and the two regent empresses and the young emperor, and the vast Mandarin bureaucracy buttressed by Confucianism and Tao.

There is a lot of sex in this book, but it isn't simply for titillation; it shows Hart's total enchantment with China and the people in the person of Ayaou, his concubine. Her story and the story of how Hart won her is the personal side of a very interesting historical novel.

I couldn't put this book down. I hope Lloyd Lofthouse will write more.
6 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Killeecs review of My Splendid Concubine
Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2015
Verified Purchase
I cannot recall reading a novel (and I have read at least 2,000+ in my lifetime) which has moved me as much as this one. Elements of this story made it a history lesson, treatise on cultural development, an examination of human nobility, human frailty, human shameful degradation, exciting military campaigns, mysteries, and clear definitions ofsubtlety of language, art and beliefs of China. The author did some serious "homework"prior to putting pen to paper.The hero was so richly described I felt history and fear, his angers, pains, shames, his appreciation of all that was admirable about China's culture. His concubine was a beautiful human all the way to her core. The depiction of China's evolution in the 54 years Robert Hartwas there mesmerized me. I spent time in China in 2004 and again in 2007. So many things in this novel brought back to life 100s of fond memories. I wish it had been possible for the author to continue the story to reunite Hart with his children and continue their story to a point of resolution of their awareness and respectful interaction with their father and awareness of respectful appreciation of their mother
6 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Louise Vangestel
5.0 out of 5 stars a must read
Reviewed in Australia on May 5, 2023
Verified Purchase
Brilliant and I enjoyed every page.a wonderful story with insights to China in the 1700’s. A love story to be envious of
One person found this helpful
 Report
Dan Earle
5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding China better.
Reviewed in Canada on November 4, 2015
Verified Purchase
This was such an enlightening book about the history of China and its interaction with the imperialist empire of Great Britain and others. I had read about the Opium Wars and such in high school, many years ago, but we never got the perspective that this book brings to the table. It provides some appreciation for the changes brought about by Mao and the reasons that China is politically the way it is today. It had a big yoke of oppression to overcome thanks to the period of British oppression.
Report
GarrettAJ
5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 19, 2015
Verified Purchase
I highly recommend this book. I had read a short biography of Robert Hart and knew the bones of his life story but until I read Lofthouse's account I had no conception of the scale of the man's achievement in over 50 years labour in 19th century China. One little quibble - Hart was not English. He was Irish, born in Portadown in what is now Northern Ireland and was then Ireland. Hart's determination to understand the Chinese and their culture and at the same time not to accept their attitude to women made life difficult for him on many occasions but his skill in diplomacy and innate respect for people enabled him to surmount incredible obstacles. There are mountains of official records of his work but, where his relationship with Ayaou is concerned, I'm certain that Lofthouse had to build the picture using common sense and whatever scraps of fact he came by. The manner in which he has woven fact and imagining together is clever and, given Hart's early behaviour as a student, highly credible. The end of their relationship is tragic in the extreme and Hart's subsequent life very grey by comparison. His official work was marked by several nations with honours bestowed and he became Pro-Chancellor of Queen's University, Belfast on his retirement from official work.
Report
Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars If you like fiction based on Chinese history this is for you
Reviewed in India on July 9, 2015
Verified Purchase
If you like fiction based on Chinese history this is for you. Unfortunately the author does not seem to have made up his mind on deciding how would he go about it: is it memoir, fictionalized biography or plain juicy fiction. So in parts it meanders and tends to be repetitive occasionally. With some deft editing at least 50 pages could have been reduced. So it is slightly long on tooth, so at times difficult to decide whether its a smile or a grimace. Overall, I liked the book; it made me understand the behind the scene influences of Opium War and the Ch'ing dynasty's near collapse.
Report
Richard Abbott
4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting and unusual setting, slightly let down by flaws in execution
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2014
Verified Purchase
My Splendid Concubine is set in 19th century China, as seen through the eyes of Robert Hart, an Irishman posted to Ningpo by the British civil service as an interpreter. The main part of the story covers about a decade, starting in 1854 as he arrives. A brief epilogue narrates his final departure in 1908.

Hart is a fascinating character, who became completely enamoured with Chinese culture and devoted his life to it. At the start this focused on tackling the immediate human horror of opium addiction, sponsored by European mercantile interests. As he proved his ability and loyalty, and rose in rank within the Chinese bureaucracy, he became able to tackle internal corruption and external threat on a much wider scale. For all this, he was trusted and honoured in quite extraordinary ways by the Imperial dynasty.

Lloyd’s story mixes Hart’s official and personal lives, and in particular the ways in which his love for a girl he took as concubine shaped, and ultimately conflicted with, his advancement. Hart begins the book driven by pure hedonism (constantly at war with his Methodist upbringing), but gradually converts this into a rather exhausting level of altruistic service. By the end of the story, his personal relationships have been pushed firmly to the back, and are driven by the same commitment to duty as his official tasks.

As other reviewers have commented, the early parts of the book are heavily laced with sexual detail. This is, I think, not gratuitous but mirrors Hart’s own preoccupation in his younger days. As he becomes more committed to his work, so his attention largely turns to political and cultural matters. The pursuit of pleasure is still present, but its target has broadened. His sex life dwindles as his political life expands.

Lloyd clearly has great passion for this place and time, as well as for Hart himself. He went to considerable trouble to track down documentary sources outside those which were readily available. Unfortunately, the actual production of the book shows less care than the research behind it. There are a surprising number of spelling and grammatical mistakes. Stylistically the occasional insertion of historical notes or comments on future actions tends to throw you out of the story, and I think these could have been incorporated more smoothly. He talks at some length about aspects of Chinese culture which were strikingly beautiful – in contrast to Hart’s first impression of smelly squalor – but the writing itself retains very little of this elegance. The few extracts from Chinese poems scarcely make up for the general lack of style.

The book has two major sections, which give the impression that they were written separately and then simply combined without continuity editing. Several episodes from Part 1 are carefully explained in Part 2, which might have been needed when released separately but make no sense now the book is a whole. Some Chinese phrases, such as “lose face“, are italicised early on to show they have a technical meaning, but are treated as normal text later. On the other hand, the epilogue, which deserves to be presented as a separate section, runs straight on from the previous chapter – this is confusing when first read. Some parts of dialogue carefully use period-specific terms or direct renderings of Chinese terms, but these are mixed with words like “okay” which jar somewhat.

In short, a four star book for me. Lloyd successfully invites the reader to appreciate this part of Chinese history, and the challenges of Hart’s own life. It is an unusual setting, and deals with a remarkable man. However, the execution of the book distracts from the story in various ways, and I could have wished that the prose style mirrored the content more closely.
9 people found this helpful
 Report
Report an issue

Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report