Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China

This work explores significant physical aspects of the printed book in late imperial China to reconstruct the changing assumptions with which Chinese popular novels were originally read from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. It focuses on the previously neglected areas of book format, varieties of illustrations and their significance, and the theory and practice of reading illustrated narratives. The author first considers the physical book itself, as a vehicle for reading and as an object for visual enjoyment, tracing the development of the format commonly used for popular reading materials, the blockprinted book in sewn volumes with illustrations. He describes the technological progress that made book production efficient and economical by the middle of the sixteenth century, and makes extensive comparisons between the physical characteristics of novels and books of more artistically refined content.