This study explores patterns in Chinese publishing before the technological revolution of the late-nineteenthcentury .It centers on thelate Qianlong,Jiaqing andDaoguang reign periods (1796-1850) .The focusis largely on fiction,but I occasionally look beyond that genre by wayof supplementing the discussion .Well before the mechanization that took place when Gutenberg arrived in late-nineteenth century Shanghai,to use Christopher A .Reed's formulation,four changes were underway that point in thedirection of what aregenerallyidentified as later markers of literary modernity .These four are the amount of fictional output,the way it was distributed,the amount of international awareness in the fiction,and the composition of the readership for which it was designed .The existence of these trends prior to the late-nineteenth century revolution in printing technology and,even more,to the early twentieth century changes in education and literary life suggest that,in our efforts to define literary modernity,we should be attentive to continuities as well as to the causal force of sudden outside influences or internal revolutions .