Cause & Context
At the height of the High Qing era, the Qianlong Emperor ordered an exhaustive collection of imperial and private libraries to compile the definitive compendium of Chinese literature.
Epochal Overview
Chief editor Ji Xiaolan and over 360 scholars worked for a decade to produce the *Siku Quanshu* (Complete Library in Four Sections: Classics, History, Philosophy, Literature), comprising 3,461 works in 79,337 volumes (nearly 800 million characters) housed in seven imperial libraries.
Key Figures
The Qianlong Emperor directed the project alongside Chief Editor Ji Xiaolan and Qianjia evidential scholars such as Dai Zhen.
Civilizational Impact
The *Siku Quanshu* stands as the largest single collection of premodern books in Chinese history, comprehensively consolidating two millennia of traditional literature and scholarship.