A history of Chinese letters and epistolary culture / / edited by Antje Richter.

• Superior document: Handbook of Oriental studies Handbuch der Orientalistik. Section Four, China, Volume 31
• TeilnehmendeR: Richter, Antje,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, The Netherlands : : Koninklijke Brill,, 2015.; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Handbuch der Orientalistik. China ; Volume 31.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (998 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.
• Other title: Preliminary Material --; Introduction: The Study of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture /; 1 Reconstructing the Postal Relay System of the Han Period /; 2 Letters as Calligraphy Exemplars: The Long and Eventful Life of Yan Zhenqing’s (709–785) Imperial Commissioner Liu Letter /; 3 Chinese Decorated Letter Papers /; 4 Material and Symbolic Economies: Letters and Gifts in Early Medieval China /; 5 Letters in the Wen xuan /; 6 Between Letter and Testament: Letters of Familial Admonition in Han and Six Dynasties China /; 7 The Space of Separation: The Early Medieval Tradition of Four-Syllable “Presentation and Response” Poetry /; 8 Letters and Memorials in the Early Third Century: The Case of Cao Zhi /; 9 Liu Xie’s Institutional Mind: Letters, Administrative Documents, and Political Imagination in Fifth- and Sixth-Century China /; 10 Bureaucratic Influences on Letters in Middle Period China: Observations from Manuscript Letters and Literati Discourse /; 11 Private Letter Manuscripts from Early Imperial China /; 12 Su Shi’s Informal Letters in Literature and Life /; 13 The Letter as Artifact of Sentiment and Legal Evidence /; 14 Infinite Variations of Writing and Desire: Love Letters in China and Europe /; 15 Writing from Revolution’s Debris: Shen Congwen’s Family Letters in the Mao Era /; 16 Captured in Words: Functions and Limits of Autobiographical Expression in Early Chinese Epistolary Literature /; 17 Civil Examinations and Cover Letters in the Mid-Tang: Dugu Yu’s (776–815) “Letter Submitted to Attendant Gentleman Quan of the Ministry of Rites” /; 18 The Inscription of Emotion in Mid-Tang Collegial Letters /; 19 Halves and Holes: Collections, Networks, and Epistolary Practices of Chan Monks /; 20 Letters as Windows on Ming-Qing Women’s Literary Culture /; 21 Epistolary Networks and Practice in the Early Qing: The Letters Written to Yan Guangmin /; 22 Aid and Comfort: Lu Zhaolin’s Letters /; 23 She Association Circulars from Dunhuang /; 24 Between Writing and Publishing Letters: Publishing a Letter about Book Proprietorship /; 25 Opinions Going Public: Letters to the Editors in China’s Earliest Modern Newspapers /; Scholarship on Chinese Epistolary Literature and Culture: A Select Bibliography --; Index.
• Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• ISBN: 9789004292123
• ISSN: 0169-9520
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: edited by Antje Richter.

A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture is the first publication, in any language, that is dedicated to the study of Chinese epistolary literature and culture in its entirety, from the early empire to the twentieth century. The volume includes twenty-five essays dedicated to a broad spectrum of topics from postal transmission to letter calligraphy, epistolary networks to genre questions. It introduces dozens of letters, often the first translations into English, and thus makes epistolary history palpable in all its vitality and diversity: letters written by men and women from all walks of life to friends and lovers, princes and kings, scholars and monks, seniors and juniors, family members and neighbors, potential patrons, newspaper editors, and many more. With contributions by: Pablo Ariel Blitstein, R. Joe Cutter, Alexei Ditter, Ronald Egan, Imre Galambos, Natascha Gentz, Enno Giele, Natasha Heller, David R. Knechtges, Paul W. Kroll, Jie Li, Y. Edmund Lien, Bonnie S. McDougall, Amy McNair, David Pattinson, Zeb Raft, Antje Richter, Anna M. Shields, Suyoung Son, Janet Theiss, Xiaofei Tian, Lik Hang Tsui, Matthew Wells, Ellen Widmer, and Suzanne E. Wright.