Abstract
Youxue gushi qionglin 幼學故事瓊林 (Treasury of Allusions for Young Students) was the most popular textbook for children in China during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Publishers attributed this book to a late-Ming school teacher, but, except for this, our knowledge of it is very limited. The present paper, based on the layouts and paratextual features found in numerous extant editions and reprints, traces the book’s transformation across three hundred years by looking at the efforts expended by a stream of annotators, editors, block carvers, printers, and lithographers to turn a textbook compiled by an early, unknown author into a desirable product for contemporary readers. Moreover, having laid that foundation, the present work explores the strategies of commercial publishers and the factors that shaped the circulation of popular books generally in this period.
Keywords
Youxue gushi qionglin, Youxue xuzhi, book history, commercial publishing, low-end book market, paratext
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