Beijing Library Manuscript and Blockprint Series: Continuation of Mirrored Flower Origin

Author: Hu Qinsan
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1992-10-01
Features: The four volumes and forty chapters of A Continuation of Mirror of Flowers and Origin, written by Hu Qinsan of Shanghai in the second year of the Xuantong reign (1910). This book has never been published and is truly a rare manuscript novel. In 1987, Japan's Shuppan Shokoku published Supplemented Catalogue of Chinese Popular Fiction (edited by Otsuka Hidetaka), which recorded this manuscript as "formerly owned by Zhou Yuoran" based on Zheng Yimei's notes, but its current location and the number of its volumes remain unknown. In October 1992, the Bibliography and Documentation Publishing House first published a photolithographic edition of the manuscript of A Continuation of Mirror of Flowers and Origin. The "Preface to Publication" at the beginning of the book informs us that the manuscript is now preserved in the Beijing Library. Opening the book, the title pages and chapter pages are prominently stamped with Zhou Yuoran's collection seal, confirming that this is indeed the manuscript of A Continuation of Mirror of Flowers and Origin that was "formerly owned by Zhou Yuoran," making it a unique and sole surviving copy in the world.