YŎNGGWANG ŬPCHI (or YEONGGWANG EUPJI) 靈光邑誌 [Gazetteer of Yŏnggwang] -

One full-page woodcut county map. Wooden movable type. 74 folding leaves. Large 8vo (320 x 202 mm.), orig. brown semi-stiff wrappers (wrappers a little tired & soiled), new stitching. [Korea]: 1897. Rare edition of this local gazetteer of Yeonggwang (or Yŏnggwang) county, located on the coast of South Jeolla province in the southeastern part of the Korean peninsula. We find no copy of this edition in WorldCat, but it is held at a few libraries in South Korea. The word "gazetteer" is used in reference to a genre of East Asian historical and geographical texts generally known in Korea as ŭpchi 邑誌, which term translates roughly to "local treatises." The now rare English word "gazetteer" is here used in analogy with a similar genre that existed in British India. As one of the colophons to this work puts it, "a gazetteer is the traces of a locality, and personages, customs, mountains and rivers, and local products are all recorded in it." In Korea, truly local gazetteers covering smaller jurisdictions date only from the early 16th century; the earliest surviving book dates from 1581. The first edition of this gazetteer was published in 1627, but to our knowledge, it is no longer extant, leaving our edition as the earliest available. According to the book's "editorial principles" (pŏmnye 凡例), our edition was modeled on the first edition, with some amendments. Our copy of the Gazetteer of Yŏnggwang has two Prefaces, one "old" (ku 舊) and one written for the occasion of this edition. The old Preface was written in 1627 (chŏngmyo 丁卯) by Sin Ŭng-sun (or Sin Eung-sun) 辛應純 (1572-1636), who was from Yŏnggwang. Sin was a Confucian scholar who helped amass provisions for the defense against the first Manchu invasion, which took place in the same year that he wrote this Preface for the first edition of the gazetteer. The new Preface was written by Sin T'ae-gwan 申泰寬 (b. 1839), who was the magistrate of Yŏnggwang county. The book furthermore contains three colophons, all dated 1897. The colophons were written by Yi Chong-su 李鍾洙, Sim Ŭn-taek 沈殷澤, and Chŏng Kuk-hyŏn 丁國鉉. By contrast, WorldCat 1102326653 is dated 1891 (but this is a manuscript of the text held by UC Berkeley). Very good copy. First few leaves a little dusty. References Encyclopedia of Korean Culture 한국민족문화대백과사전. https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/ Korean Old and Rare Collection Information System 한국고문헌종합목록. https://www.nl.go.kr/korcis/index.do.