Introduction -- Late Qing Encyclopaedias: Establishing a New Enterprise -- From News to New Knowledge : Newspapers as Sources for Early Modern Chinese Encyclopaedias -- The Complete Compilation of New Knowledge (1902): Its Classification Scheme and its Sources -- The Formation of Encyclopaedic Commonplaces during the Late Qing: Entries on the Newspaper -- Japanese Encyclopaedias. A Hidden Impact on Late Qing Chinese Encyclopaedias? -- From The Register of Ancients to Befriend to Brief Biographies of Notables Worldwide—A Study of Late Qing Biographical Dictionaries -- “Wenxue” in the Purview of late Qing Encyclopaedias and Textbooks—With a Focus on Huang Ren's Activities as Compiler -- Modern Chinese Encyclopaedic Dictionaries: Novel Concepts and New Terminology (1903–1911) -- “New Methods to Nourish the People”: Late Qing. Encyclopaedic Writings on Political Economy -- Helping  Our People “to Jointly Hurry Along the Path to Civilization”: The Everyday Cyclopaedia, Riyong baike quanshu -- China’s New Encyclopaedia and Their Readers -- Studies on the Characteristics of Late Qing Encyclopaedia Entries -- List of encyclopaedic works studied in this volume.

This is a set of pioneering studies on Chinese encyclopaedias of modern knowledge (1870-1930). At a transitional time when modern knowledge was sought after yet few modern schools were available, these works were crucial sources of information for an entire generation. This volume investigates many of these encyclopaedias, which were never reprinted and are hardly known even to specialists, for the first time. The contributors to this collection all specialize in the period in question and have worked together for a number of years. The resulting studies show that these encyclopaedias open a unique window onto the migration and ordering systems of knowledge across cultural and linguistic borders.