中国古代的小说体类庞杂，作品浩繁。就语言形式而言，有文言、白话之不同；就作品类型而言，则有笔记、话本和章回体之别。它们以各自的方式记录了古时候的人生世象、社会风情，演绎着感人的故事。这些作品经过数百年的流传，其中一部分或因内容生动，或因语言优美，深受广大读者的欢迎，成为了名著。在这些名著的序列中，更有一些处于金字塔的地位，在整个古代中具有极为深广的影响力，有着经典的意义。人民文学出版社是新中国建国后，最早出版中国古典小说的出版社。几十年来，我社陆续出版过几乎所有重要的中国古代小说，对广大读者产生过重要影响。为满足读者阅读经典名著的需要，我们此次特别推出的“中国古代小说名著插图典藏系列”，包括“四大名著”、“三言二拍”、《儒林外史》、《聊斋志异》等共十一种作品，这批小说既代表着中国古典小说的最高成就，也具有各自独特的价值和意义，本系列均由名家校勘和注释，并配有明清时期的精美插图，希望能得到读者们的青睐。

Chinese ancient novels are of various forms and large quantity. As for the linguistic forms, there is classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese; as for the types of works, there is note style, story-telling script style and chapter style. They record the ancient life, social customs and perform moving stories in their own way. After being handed down for hundreds of years, some of these works are widely beloved by the readers and become masterpieces due to their vivid content or beautiful language. In the list of the masterpieces, some are on the top of the pyramid and have extremely profound influence and classic significance in the whole ancient time. People’s Literature Publishing House is the press which firstly published Chinese classical novels after People’s Republic of China was founded. For decades, our press has published almost all the important Chinese ancient novels and has an important impact on the readers. To meet the readers’ demand of reading Chinese classical novels, we especially launch a “Series of Illustration Collection of Masterpieces of Chinese Ancient Novels” this time, including eleven works of “Four Great Classical Novels”, “San Yan Er Pai”, The Scholars, Strange Stories from a Lonely Studio, etc. These novels not only represent the highest achievement of Chinese classical novels, but also have their own unique value and significance. This series are all collated and annotated by famous writers and attached with exquisite illustrations of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. We hope they will be appreciated by the readers.