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BOOK LISTS
THE POPULAR CULTURE OF LATE CH'ING AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY CHINA: BOOK LISTS PREPARED FROM COLLECTING IN
HONG KONG
This book list is not taken from library sources, nor for lack of time has it been compared with local library holdings. It is compiled from my purchases of material in local bookstores and street stalls over the last four years; in additional preparation for writing the long article from which this bibliographic portion has been extracted, revised and augmented.
It aims to give no more than an indication of (a) material in certain categories that has come down from later Ch'ing and Republican times (b) its relevance for a study of government and society in those periods.
The details of books are not always complete in every particular. Missing pages at front and rear, and especially the colourful title pages in red and yellow often favoured by the printers and publishers—and beloved of book collectors—account for most lacunae.
No attempt has been made to cover every sub-head in the text: readers will find most entries in those subjects which have interested me most. Indeed, a new section (n) “subscription books” and new sub-sections (dd) "Riddles and Proverbs" and (gg) "Guides to Official Forms and Letter Writing" have been added.
Section A BOOKS AND HANDBOOKS
The lists follow the order of the listing in Section A of the article in the Hong Kong Library Journal, as follows:
(a) Genealogical records
I have not listed any here, but for those used in my other work, see the article prepared for the World Conference.
*These lists relate to a paper on bibliographic aspects of popular culture in this period to be published shortly in the Journal of the Hong Kong Library Association, Number 7. This in turn is part of a larger study "Written Materials and Specialists in the Village World" due for publication as part of the Proceedings of the Conference on Popular Culture in Ming and Ch'ing, held at East-West Center, University of Hawaii, in January 1981 and jointly sponsored by the Center and the East Asian Studies Center at Columbia University.
The lists are published separately in this Journal to complement the essay in the Hong Kong Library Journal which did not have space for the full text and the book list, in order to make both more readily available in Hong Kong.