Books without Borders: Transnational Networks of Publishing and Bookselling between China and Britain in the 19th Century

This paper examines the development of the transnational networks of publishing and bookselling between China and Britain in the 19th century. It is divided into three parts. The first part explores the early attempts of transnational joint-publishing between China and Britain since Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary in China, published his various works in the early 19th century, including his formidable Chinese-English dictionary, which was printed in Macao and published in London. Second, it investigates the book collection, circulation, and distribution of imported English books in public and private hands on the China coast until 1870s when a number of treaty ports were opened following the Nanking Treaty. Third, it analyses the formation of transnational publishing and bookselling from the early 1870s because of the burgeoning demand for imported books driven by the rapid increase of foreign population and the expansion of readership. The reading public experienced a fundamental change in the book market innovated by the Shanghai-based-and-Hong-Kong-registered British publishers booksellers Kelly & Walsh, which on the one hand regularly imported new books by English, American, and European mails and advertised the titles in the North-China Daily News, the most popular English-newspaper in China, and on the other hand frequently joint-published China-related books written by consulsinologists and missionary-sinologists in China with eminent publishers and booksellers, such as Trübner, in London. Drawing extensively on the catalogues and advertisements of Kelly & Walsh and their frequent involvement in and close connection to various literary and social establishments, it argues that the publishers and booksellers were among the most important agencies actively engaged in transnational networks of publishing and bookselling between China and Britain in the 19th century.