Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th-17th Centuries)
By Lucille Chia
Harvard University Press, December 2002

     This work examines the publishing industry of late imperial China by focusing on publishers from Jianyang in Fujian, the largest printing center in China from the Song through the Ming dynasties. These publishers played a significant role in elite intellectual and cultural life of the late imperial period through the production and wide distribution of an impressive range of texts, including the Confuscian Classics, Histories, dictionaries, literary anthologies, and illustrated novels. Equally important were Jianyang imprints of cheap editions of school primers, medical texts, household encyclopedias, and other popular texts, which helped disseminate information to the growing body of less affluent but increasingly literate consumers. Because of the broad cultural, historical, and geographical scope of the Jianyang book trade, findings from this study help us to understand the history of the book in traditional China in general.
     The study of Chinese books and book culture has long been considered a fascinating but difficult topic of research. This study demonstrates how such work can be done: counting and examining the imprints themselves, sifting through other sources such as local histories, genealogies of the printer families, and literary and anecdotal collections, which together allow a reconstruction of the social and intellectual milieu in which these publishers worked.