Huang Pilie and the Rituals of Book Collecting during an Age of Prosperity

Abstract

Apart from a number of brief visits to the capital required of him by his (unsuccessful) participation in the civil service examinations, the Suzhou bibliophile Huang Pilie 黃丕烈 (1765-1825) journeyed almost nowhere. Instead, books made their way to him, in great numbers. Huang devoted more than thirty years of his life to the acquisition, copying, and collating of ancient editions. He was one of the most important book collectors of what has been regarded as the golden age of private book collecting in China, the half-century covering the late years of the reign of the Qianlong emperor (1711-1799; r. 1736-1795) and the entire reign of the Jiaqing emperor (1760-1820; r. 1796-1820), an ‘Age of Prosperity’ (shengshi 盛世). For almost a decade between 1801 and 1811, this library owner, editor, bibliographer, publisher, and, in his final year, (again, somewhat unsuccessfully) bookseller, who styled himself as the Master besotted with imprints of the Song dynasty (Ning Song zhuren 佞宋主人) and was the owner of the famous Hundred Song Imprints in a Single Shed (Bai Song yichan 百宋一廛), also conducted a book ritual (ji shu 祭書) of his own devising whereby, every New Year’s Eve, he would lay out before a select number of guests his best acquisitions of the preceding year and undertake rituals more usually associated with ancestor worship. My paper discusses aspects of Huang Pilie’s life and work as a book collector with reference particularly to the 800 or so extant colophons he wrote for books either in his own collection or in those of his acquaintances.