The history of book-banning was a tradition that lasted for over two thousand years in premodern China. Famous examples include Shang Yang’s “Burning Confucian Classics of the Book of Poetry and the Book of Documents” in the Warring States Period, the First Emperor of Qin’s “Burning of Books and Burial of Confucian scholars,” and the Literary Inquisition in Qing dynasty. The curated premodern collection in this “Banned Books Project” consists of around one hundred books from public collections that were prohibited during the late imperial China, i.e. the Ming and Qing dynasties. With their reasons of prohibition categorized into four types— political, religious, philosophical, and moral, various banned books in this project are documented and presented through photography.
PRE-MODERN BANNED BOOKS
POLITICAL
RELIGIOUS
PHILOSOPHICAL
MORAL
The history of book-banning was a tradition that lasted for over two thousand years in premodern China. Famous examples include Shang Yang’s “Burning Confucian Classics of the Book of Poetry and the Book of Documents” in the Warring States Period, the First Emperor of Qin’s “Burning of Books and Burial of Confucian scholars,” and the Literary Inquisition in Qing dynasty. The curated premodern collection in this “Banned Books Project” consists of around one hundred books from public collections that were prohibited during the late imperial China, i.e. the Ming and Qing dynasties. With their reasons of prohibition categorized into four types— political, religious, philosophical, and moral, various banned books in this project are documented and presented through photography.