HUAYW1
Huang Zhengyuan comp: YINZHI WEN TUSHUO. (The Text of Unrevealed Virtue, Illustrated and Explained). N.p. n.d. (1801?). 2, 1-30, 32-40; 58; 49; 52 folded leaves, Chinese style. 39; 57; 48; 50 (total 194 of 195) woodcut illustrations. 9 columns of 22 characters, 'baikou', no fishtail, double rules all around, printed area 20x14.5 cm. 4 vols. 28x17 cm. Stitched, with new paper covers and book labels in a new cloth case.
GBP 1,800.00
The 'Yinzhi Wen' exists in a number of late Qing renditions, attributed to various compilers. It is a text of ethical instruction providing a large number of historical and fantastical anecdotes to discourage evil and promote goodness, focused on the life and works of Wenchang Dijun, a god of the communal and Daoist popular religions in China, who is often thought of as the god of literature and scholarship.
This copy has a postface by Rong Zhu dated Qianlong 50 (1785) but is almost certainly a later printing done during the Jiaqing period, possibly the known 1801 edition. It has a large number of vibrant woodcut illustrations, which may be usefully compared with, in particular, the later renditions of the same text with designs by Fei Danxu which are considered to represent a shift in Chinese book illustration towards that of turn-of-the-century Shanghai.
The book is in good condition for its age and for this type of material. It is printed on a medium quality whitish paper. There is staining to a few leaves and there are one or two small marks and annotations in Chinese characters in blue and purple ink.
There appears to be one leaf missing from volume one, which probably (but not with absolute certainty) included an illustration. The four volumes are marked with the special ordinal characters for sets of four: yuan, heng, li, zhen. A sensitively conserved copy of a scarce work.
Cf. the later edition comp. by Xu Guangqing and illustrated with (87) designs by Fei Danxu, with one of its woodcut reproduced in 'Zhongguo Meishu Quanji: Huihua Bian,' 20: Banhua, number 168. Pas, 'A to Z of Taoism' 356.
Subjects: Woodcuts Illustrated Books
Available, as of: 01/09/2008
Was item 193 in printed List 140.
Record produced by Hanshan Tang Books, www.hanshan.com.
