A Study On Suian Xu’s Series

The Suian Xu’s Series, composed by two sets respectively including ten ancient books, is collected and republished by Xu Naichang, a famous bibliophile of the late Qing Dynasty. It appears to be that, these twenty kinds of books were inscribed as facsimile publications of their old-aged master editions in Song and Yuan Dynasty. With the help of the outstanding carving copy typographer Tao Zilin and the celebrated emendator Miu Quansun, the first set of the Series came into press between the 29th and 34th year of Guangxu (1903-1908) while the second set is completed on the 5th year of the Republic of China (1916), definitely representing the climax of "the replica block-printing" business during the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, of which this thesis attempts to sketch a brief account with taking the Series as an example.The thesis is divided into two chapters, among which Chapter One is made up of four subchapters; the first of them is given to an introduction on the background about the distribution of the Series and the discussion on the motivation of Xu Naichang’s persisting in replica block-printing technique while the photogravure technology of the western world had invaded the publish guild of his country, followed by the second part on the restoration of the detailed process of Xu’s editing the Series based on the author’s studies into historical documents; textual researches on the master copies of those twenty kinds of books in the Series have been put in the third part that testifies the forging of the date of some master copies once regarded as Song and Yuan Dynasty; and the forth part is about the comparison of the type face between books of the Series and their master editions. The thesis ends with Chapter Two that monographically emphasizes on the textual analyze of four books chosen from the Series. Researches on Documents of Celestial Beings, Incredible Tales and A New Collection of Ballads value on the emendation to their original copies, along with the remain part belongs to the study on Lady Yuxuanji’s Poetry revealing the phenomenon that the preface and postscript, as well as seals of this book do not share resemblances with its master copy.