Seven-Character Collection

Author: Qian Zhongshu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-06-01
Features: Four Old Essays was published five years ago and is now very difficult to obtain. Although The Also Collection has recently been published in Hong Kong, it is not convenient to sell in mainland China. It seems that readers in our country have a habit of writing to the often helpless author to vent their frustrations when they cannot find a book. A reader—perhaps it should be said, a reader who desires a book but cannot find one—wrote to me, asking me to combine The Also Collection and Four Old Essays and publish them in Beijing and Shanghai for wider circulation. Following his kind suggestion, I deleted the second half of The Also Collection, as it was merely selected from the new edition of Discussions on Art and will be fully published by Beijing Zhonghua Book Company next year. This volume is a combination of all Four Old Essays and the first half of The Also Collection. The former was published by Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House in September 1979, and the latter was published by Hong Kong Cornerstone Publishing in March 1984. The original short prefaces of both books have been preserved as appendices to this collection. This book is pieced together from fragments, containing seven essays, both new and old. I recalled the ancient titles such as "Five Patched Clothes" and "Seven Patched Bowls" and named this collection The Seven Patched Collection.