In today’s post, I’ll briefly discuss late imperial fiction (xiao shuo 小說). These are very much ‘notes from the field’ based on my encounters wiht only a handful of these. I have many more questions than answers about vernacular novels.

Images

For historians of the book, one of the notable characteristics of late imperial vernacular fiction is the inclusion of images. Images were part of Chinese books from the inception of Chinese printing, but illustrated books were not nearly as common in Ming and Qing China as they were in other parts of the world.

Literary fiction, however, seems to have been illustrated from the very beginning.

Continue reading “Illustrated Chinese Fiction”

A quick syllabus with my blogs

Do you want to do an East Asia in print day? Well, I think you can do it with my blog and a few other digital resources:

Here’s how I would begin:

First, read a little bit about paper – this will let you get talking about comparative materiality early on

Chinese Paper Stamps

Then, pop over to this page for an introduction to the earliest printed book

http://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=207

Read about early bindings:

http://idp.bl.uk/education/bookbinding/bookbinding.a4d

Now read about woodblocks after seeing someone in Chengdu printing with one:

Continue reading “A Quick curriculum for Chinese book history”