Social History of the Chinese Book – Books and Literati Culture in Late Imperial China

Joseph McDermott is presently Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and University Lecturer in Chinese at Cambridge University. He has published widely on Chinese social and economic history, most recently on the economy of the Song dynasty for the Cambridge History of China. He has edited State and Court Ritual in China and Art and Power in East Asia.

A brilliant piece of synthetic research as well as a delightful read, it offers a history of the Chinese book to the eighteenth century that is without equal. -- Timothy Brook, University of British Columbia