Panizzi 3 Empire of Texts: The Expansion of Woodblock Publishing and the Rise of the Common Reader
Channel: British Library
Date: 2022-02-09

In this final lecture in the Panizzi series, Cynthia Brokaw addresses the major trends in publishing during the Qing dynasty, including the explosion of the commercial market in popular texts formatted to appeal to the growing population of readers.

Publishing industries were now founded in hinterland areas and even peasant villages deep in the interior. By the beginning of the 19th century, a fairly unified popular book culture had taken root and would serve as a powerful force for the cultural integration of China Proper.

We address the rise of a more sober and reflective culture, permeated, at least at the elite level, by regret for the loss of Chinese sovereignty.

Cynthia Brokaw is Professor of History and East Asian Studies and Chen Family Professor of Chinese Studies at Brown University, where she teaches early modern Chinese history. Her research focuses on the social history of publishing and book culture in China, with particular attention to the relationship between the growth of commercial publishing and the development of a large commoner reading public in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.