425 full-page woodcut ports. 16 vols. 8vo, orig. wrappers, old stitching. Changzhou: Privately Printed, 1830-31.

First edition, rare and a very fine set, of this richly illustrated book, a collection of woodblock portraits of historical figures accompanied by short texts. The individuals illustrated, beginning with Cang Jie, the legendary inventor of the Chinese script, lived from antiquity to as recently as the Ming dynasty. Ye Shusheng 葉樹聲 and Yu Minhui 余敏輝, in their Historical Outline of Private Printing in the Lower Yangzi Region in the Ming and Qing Periods (Ming-Qing Jiangnan siren keshu shilüe 明清江南私人刻書史略, 2000), write that... More