Madame Mao [Jiang Qing] Autograph letter to the journalist Yang Yi, 15 January, [c.1950s]

JIANG QING ("MADAME MAO", 1914-1991)

Autograph letter signed to the journalist Yang Yi, 15 March [1950s]

written in black ink with a pen, informing him that she has found the dictionary he was looking for and telling him to keep it if he finds it useful, and assuring him that his letter to [his mother] Wenxuan has been sent

1 page, 8vo (21.1 x 14.2cm), thin laid paper, dated 15 March, no year [but probably 1950s]

RARE: We can trace no record of anything by Jiang Qing ("Madame Mao"), appearing at auction in the West. For ten years she was arguably the most powerful woman on earth.

Jiang Qing had been a film actress, known as Lán Píng, until the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937, when she moved to the Communist Party headquarters in Yan'an and became involved with Mao Zedong.  The pair were secretly married in November 1938, even though Mao was still married to He Zizhen (1910-1984), who had accompanied him on the Long March and born him six children. Because Mao's marriage had not yet ended, Jiang Qing was made to sign a contract agreeing not to appear in public with Mao and was also required to stay out of public politics for thirty years. She served as Mao's personal secretary in the 1940s and was head of the Film Section of the Communist Party's Propaganda Department in the 1950s, when this letter was probably written. During the Cultural Revolution, Madame Mao took extensive and brutal revenge on many of the figures who had denigrated her films and her relationship with Mao.