The Power of Print in Modern China: Intellectuals and Industrial Publishing from the End of Empire to Maoist State Socialism by Robert Culp, and: Writing for Print: Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial China by Suyoung Son (review)

The two works reviewed examine book culture and publishing in two very different periods of Chinese history. Suyoung Son’s Writing for Print looks at a particular set of publishing practices in the early part of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), a period that saw the culmination of many developments in Chinese book culture and when printed works (predominantly by woodblocks) went hand in hand with manuscript production. Her introduction lays out a highly ambitious plan for her book, including the examination of the complex relationships between writing and publishing (in the broad sense of the word), as well as state censorship in an age when printing had already been in use in China for a thousand years and when one saw the culmination of many aspects of woodblock printing. Moreover, Son does not limit her discussion to China. She also provides a comparison between the circulation in Qing China and Chosŏn Korea of one of the collections (congshu 叢書) she examines in detail to illustrate state censorship practices in the eighteenth century. Son unifies these subjects by focusing on literary production by the literati, in particular, two early Qing authors and editors: Zhang Chao 張潮 (1650–ca. 1707) in Yangzhou and Wang Zhuo 王晫 (1636–ca. 1707) in Hangzhou—two cities in the Jiangnan area, which was generally deemed the cultural heartland of late imperial China.

The first part of Son’s book (chaps. 1–3) discusses the various ways that late Ming and early Qing literati—who often combined the roles of author, editor, and publisher—sought to gain literary fame and monetary profit through publishing their works. Chapter 1 looks at Zhang Chao, who had many advantages in his literary and publishing endeavors. He was a native of Huizhou (an area with a long history of book production), a member of a literati family, and a salt merchant living in Yangzhou, with connections to other wealthy merchants and to the educated elite of the city.

Son argues that Zhang Chao and his literary coterie actually publicized their own works and those of their associates in print, in a way similar to how manuscripts were disseminated among such a group (as with the handwritten copies of the novel Jinping mei 金瓶梅). Thus, having one’s work printed was a way to gain literary fame, through a controlled, limited circulation of manuscripts among a suitable read-ership. Such an approach to publishing mitigated the tension between limiting readership to a group (coterie) and publicizing a work broadly through printing.

This point is further developed in chapter 2, which focuses on Wang Zhuo, who began with somewhat less cultural and financial capital than Zhang Chao (with whom he became a collaborator). It seems that Wang was more involved with commercial publishers in Zhejiang and Fujian, which produced a wide variety of works that appealed to both literati and broader popular readerships. Wang’s desire to include himself, his family, and his friends either as authors or subjects of works he published actually netted criticism from more exclusive readers. Chapter 3, “The Economics of Print,” looks in greater detail at how the more high-quality publications by Zhang and Wang differed from larger and cheaper editions of more popular works.

The second part of the book discusses state censorship in Qing China and Chosŏn Korea during the eighteenth century. Son points out that the Qing censors who were involved in the compilation of the imperially commissioned Siku quanshu 四庫全書 (Complete collection of the four treasuries) sanctioned a...