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.

Sentetsu sōdan 先哲叢談. Sentetsu sōdan kōhen 先哲叢談後編 / Hara Nensai 原念齋 (Zen 善), 1774-1820, author, and Hara Tokusai 原德齋, ed.

6 woodblocks, carved on both sides to print 12 leaves of Hara Nensai's 原念齋 (1774-1820) work Sentetsu sōdan 先哲叢談 (Serialized accounts of earlier wise men), a collection of biographies of Japanese Confucians of the early to mid-Tokugawa period. The work is written in classical Chinese (kanbun 漢文) with the addition of Japanese reading marks (kunten 訓點) and some glosses.

It appears that our set of blocks was produced at two different times. Permission to publish a 1st installment of the book was granted in late 1814 (Bunka 14/11/20). Carving of the blocks for the main text was completed in 1815, those for the prefaces in the following year, when we can assume that the work was first published. Nensai died in 1820. His remaining mss. passed to his son, Tokusai 德齋 (n.d.), who published a sequel (kōhen 後編). Permission to publish was given in 1827 (Bunsei 10), with the blocks for the main text completely carved in 1829 (Bunsei 12). Publication ought to have taken place the following year, when the prefaces were carved. As far as we can tell, the two installments were then issued together (suggested by the fact that we have blocks from both of them), but we find no reason to assume that the blocks for the first installment were recarved at that time. Thus we conjecture that our blocks date from 1815-1829. The book was later reissued in the Meiji period.

Our blocks correspond to the following leaves:

1. 1:5

2. 4:17

3. 6:3

4. 8:19

5. kōhen 3:28

6. kōhen 5:6