Ca. 152 illus. 30 juan in 30 vols. 8vo, new wrappers, new stitching. [China]: [after 1735?]

A rare example of an almanac that belonged to a once ubiquitous genre. Almanacs were “among the most broadly popular of guides to good fortune” in late imperial China. “Western observers in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China repeatedly commented on the ubiquity of these works. One late nineteenth-century Western observer described these texts as ‘perhaps the most universally circulated book[s] in China.’ And both Daniel Kulp and James Hayes, visiting south China in the early and middle decades of the 20th century... More