1. Introduction / Joseph McDermott and Peter Burke -- 2. Bibliography, population, and statistics : a view from the west / David McKitterick -- 3. "Noncommercial" private publishing in late imperial China / Joseph McDermott -- 4. Distribution : the transmission of books in Europe and its colonies : contours, cautions, and global comparisons / James Raven -- 5. Empire of texts : book production, book distribution, and book culture in late imperial China / Cynthia Brokaw -- 6. The proliferation of reference books, 1450-1850 / Peter Burke, with Joseph McDermott -- 7. Books for women and women readers / Peter Kornicki -- 8. Epilogue / Joseph McDermott and Peter Burke -- East Asian and European book history : a short bibliographical essay.

"This volume provides the first comparative survey of the relations between the two most active book worlds in Eurasia between 1450 and 1850. Prominent scholars in book history explore different approaches to publishing, printing, and book culture. They discuss the extent of technology transfer and book distribution between the two regions and show how much book historians of East Asia and Europe can learn from one another by raising new questions, exploring remarkable similarities and differences in these regions' production, distribution, and consumption of books. The chapters in turn show different ways of writing transnational comparative history. Whereas recent problems confronting research on European books can instruct researchers on East Asian book production, so can the privileged role of noncommercial publications in the East Asian textual record highlight for historians of the European book the singular contribution of commercial printing and market demands to the making of the European printed record. Likewise, although production growth was accompanied in both regions by a wider distribution of books, woodblock technology's simplicity and mobility allowed for a shift in China of its production and distribution sites farther down the hierarchy of urban sites than was common in Europe. And, the different demands and consumption practices within these two regions' expanding markets led to different genre preferences and uses as well as to the growth of distinctive female readerships. A substantial introduction pulls the work together and the volume ends with an essay that considers how these historical developments shape the present book worlds of Eurasia."--back cover note.

Cultures of translation in early modern Europe / Peter Burke -- The Catholic mission and translations in China, 1583-1700 / R. Po-chia Hsia -- Language as a means of transfer of cultural values / Eva Kowalská -- Translations into Latin in early modern Europe / Peter Burke -- Early modern Catholic piety in translation / Carlos M.N. Eire -- The translation of political theory in early modern Europe / Geoffrey P. Baldwin -- Translating histories / Peter Burke -- The Spectator, or the metamorphoses of the periodical : a study in cultural translation / Maria Lúcia Pallares-Burke -- The role of translations in European scientific exchanges in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries / Isabelle Pantin -- Scientific exchanges between Hellenism and Europe : translations into Greek, 1400-1700 / Efthymios Nicolaïdis -- Ottoman encounters with European science : sixteenth- and seventeenth-century translations into Turkish / Feza Günergun -- Translations of scientific literature in Russia from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century / S.S. Demidov.