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the Siku quanshu, as no remaining copies can be found today of the text from the time of its

first printing in the late Ming period. In fact, the text’s survival outside an imperial

publishing context owes itself to a manuscript copy found in Japan in the 1880s, when the

late Qing antiquarian researcher Luo Zhenyu rediscovered the text and brought it back to

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China.
Before the publication of Tao lu in the early nineteenth century, there were therefore

three major publishing contexts for texts on Jingdezhen during the Qing dynasty: gazetteers,

including provincial gazetteer Jiangxi tongzhi (1683, 1732) and county gazetteer Fuliang

xianzhi (1682, 1783); the imperial publishing project linked to the imperial library, the Siku

quanshu, completed in the late 1770s; and literati jottings of taste dispersed among

anthologies and personal writings. One of the most important compilations of old writings

was the ten-volume set, Longwei mishu Ꮂ۾।ࣣ, which was printed in 1794 by a Qing

dynasty compiler Ma Junliang৵ڲԄ. The Longwei mishu included a printing of the

1774 monograph on porcelain history and wares, Tao Shuo, which was written by Zhu

Yan, a literati who was an official secretary to Grand Palace Coordinator Wu (Da zhong

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cheng Wu ɽʕͮю) of Jiangxi province. This was the edition that the authors of

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Jingdezhen Tao lu read. Taken together, besides the literati jottings about their personal
aesthetic preferences, the corpus of texts written or published during the Qing dynasty on

porcelain history reflected the authorship of provincial and county administrators.

II. Life and Career of a Book: Jingdezhen Tao lu