H-85. The History of the Book in China
Soren Edgren
Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 8–13 June 2025
Format: in person, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA
Fee: $1,495
This course will offer a comprehensive history of books in China with reference to relevant developments in Korea and Japan and to parallels in the West. It treats the subject in the broadest sense from the advent of actual books in East Asia during the first millennium BCE until the introduction of virtual books at the end of the twentieth centuries, but the emphasis will be placed on the traditional Chinese book printed on paper from the ninth to the nineteenth century. In addition to describing the physical aspects of traditional Chinese books and their evolution over many centuries, their role as bearers of text and transmitters of knowledge will be introduced in the context of China’s long and complex history.
The conception, production, transmission, and consumption of traditional Chinese books will be discussed in this course, and key topics will include but not be limited to the following events and activities in China: the invention of paper, woodblock printing and the invention of movable type, manuscript culture, book forms and format, commercial and non-commercial publishing, languages and script in publications, texts vs. paratexts, book illustration and color printing, libraries and book collecting, and the wave of western influences on the Chinese book beginning in the nineteenth century.
This course is intended for anyone interested in the cultural history of the book in East Asia and is especially suitable for persons knowledgeable of other book cultures. Required readings are all in English, and knowledge of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean is not necessary. Advanced readings in languages other than English will be recommended to anyone requesting them.
Course History
Faculty
Soren Edgren
James Soren Edgren was Editorial Director of the Chinese Rare Books Project, an online international union catalogue of Chinese rare books, based at Princeton University from 1991 to 2011. The project currently is being transferred to the National Library of China in Beijing, where the new International Union Catalogue of Chinese Rare Books database has been established. Edgren received his Ph.D. in Sinology from the University of Stockholm, and has worked as East Asian cataloguer and bibliographer in the Royal Library (National Library of Sweden) in Stockholm and has been active in the antiquarian book trade. In addition to dozens of scholarly articles, he has written the Catalogue of the Nordenskiöld Collection of Japanese Books in the Royal Library (Stockholm, 1980) and Chinese Rare Books in American Collections (New York, 1984). He delivered the inaugural Delisle lectures on the history of the book at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 1997, and served as Associate Editor for The Oxford Companion to the Book (Oxford, 2010). In the fall semester of 2012, he began teaching a graduate seminar on “The History of the Book in China” at Princeton University.
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