The short story collection Jingu qiguan 今古奇觀 (Marvels New and Old, ca. 1644) tops the list of popular fiction in China in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Its ubiquity provides a unique opportunity to understand two important factors affecting access to books: the processes of popularization and censorship. Jingu qiguan provides a detailed picture of how the printing of vernacular fiction moved from fine editions in the Ming to wider audiences in the Qing. It also serves as a case study regarding how censorship of fiction affected the transmission of the short story in general and Jingu qiguan in particular. The case of Jingu qiguan demonstrates the power of reprints and their importance to our understanding of the transmission of fiction.

About the speaker

Margaret B. Wan is Professor of Chinese Literature and Cultural History at the University of Utah. She is the author of Regional Literature and the Transmission of Culture: Chinese Drum Ballads, 1800-1937 (Harvard, 2020) and “Green Peony” and the Rise of the Chinese Martial Arts Novel (SUNY, 2009). She is also co-editor of Yangzhou – A Place in Literature: The Local in Chinese Cultural History (Hawaii, 2015) and The Interplay of the Oral and the Written in Chinese Popular Literature (NIAS, 2010). She is a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, and has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Andrew Mellon Foundation.