Customer Reviews:
 A Joy March 26, 2007
If you love books and enjoy reading about their history, manufacture and circulation, this volume is a must, easy to read and delightfully informative. How interesting to learn that, in the intensely competitive and examination-oriented world of China, scholars and book collectors were reluctant to give access to their treasures.
 Covering 800 Years of Chinese Publishing February 19, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
To tell the whole story of the 3500 years since printing was invented in China would be too much to ask. This book narrows the subject down to 'only' 800 years from 1000 to 1800 and to only one region, the lower Yangzi delta, and on the one type of reader we know the most about, the literati.
This period encompasses the time when Chinese printing was changing from manuscript to an imprint culture. It also covers four Chinese dynasties: Song (960-1279), Yuan (1232-1367), Ming (1368-1644), Qing (1644-1911).
This book represents a considerable amount of original research into the earliest records of Chinese publishing from Chinese, Japanese and Western records. Dr. McDermott is a lecturer in chinese at Cambridge University.
|
