Good textbooks on Classical Chinese?

[Mark Yong]

I am currently hunting around for a good set of textbooks for Classical Chinese. The two which I stumbled upon via Amazon.com are:

1. "Classical Chinese: A Basic Reader in Three Volumes" by Yuan Naiying, Tang Haitao and James Geiss

2. "Language of The Dragon: A Classical Chinese Reader Vols. 1-3" by Gregory Chiang

I currently own a copy of "An Introduction to Literary Chinese" by Michael A. Fuller. It has served as a fairly good insight into the intricasies of Classical Chinese. What I like most about it is that it places minimal to zero reliance on Mandarin vocabulary and grammar, and treats Classical Chinese by itself (do any of the above two books have this feature?). The downside is, it provides very little guidance for the beginner.

All else being equal, (1) is a lot cheaper than (2), so for the non-academic, leisure Chinese scholar like me, I would prefer to go for the economical option first!

Any comments?

[hong]

Mark,
You must buy books from China by 何樂士﹐楊樹達﹐王力﹐李佐豐﹐郭錫良﹐楊伯峻﹐呂叔湘﹐朱德熙 for books on shanggu grammar first then follow by zhonggu.Of course dict like 古漢語虛詞詞典 and any 古漢語詞典 is a must.

[PanGu]

The Chinese e-dictionaries, e-books and e-textbooks
http://polusharie.com/index.php/board,80.0.html