Abstract: The phrase" Gong An" (complicated legal case) originally stemmed from the "desk " for feudal officials to lay or handle files and dossiers, which was later extended in meaning of feudal official files, and further interpreted as official documents. However, it was till to the Song Dynasty that people referred to the stories about feudal officials' settling a lawsuit as "legal case stories" and classified them into novels. Hence, a new type of subject matter,legal case novel, was finally established. Later, legal case novels went through important evolution. Legal case novel collections in Ming dynasty marked the formation of the genre; serial legal case novels in Qing dynasty ushered in the maturity of the genre; and the long legal case novels in later Qing dynasty showed a tendency of learning from translated detective novels.

Key words: legal case novel, evolution of genre, legal case