Thinking about starting a collection of famous works of Chinese literature? There’s a quick, simple way to line your shelves with the original editions of works by Lu Xun, Yu Dafu, Xu Zhimo, and other big names from the 20s, 30s, and 40s – buy a photo-reproduction.
The Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House series of Modern Literary Classics – Original Edition Collectibles is up to its fifth compilation. Earlier reissues covered the big names like A Call to Arms and Sinking; now the series is up to Collected Writings Selected by Lu Xun and the reprint shown here of a 1930 edition of Su Manshu’s sentimental stories written nearly two decades prior.
The books come in a wrapper-cover printed with the ISBN and publishing information, but this cover is designed to be removed, exposing the unblemished reproduction of the original printing’s cover. An inside page with the National Library registration information is also designed to be cut out. Apart from the paper quality and the fuzzy, photo-reproduced printing, the only thing that distinguishes these editions from true originals is that they lack a page listing the original publishing information – the price in foreign silver, a list of other books from that publisher, and so forth.
The books may not have the annotations (and horizontal, simplified printing) that more modern versions make available, but a number of the covers from that era are quite distinctive.
- Baihua (Chinese): Covers of the Modern Literature Original Edition Collectables
- Douban search for cover images