This is the 11th part of the successful series which provides art historians and students with vital primary source materials related to the reception of Japanese arts in Western societies during the period from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Edited and introduced by Ayako Ono, a leading scholar of British Japonisme and the author of Routledge books Japonisme in Britain, Whistler, Menpes, Henry, Hornel and nineteenth-century Japan, and Whistler and Artistic Exchange between Japan and the West: After Japonisme in Britain, the three volumes includes around 150 articles and papers selected from contemporary journals, newspapers and pamphlets from the pre-Japonisme period to the beginning of the 20th century, when the Japan-British Exposition was held in 1910 and the popularity of Japanese art started to diminish.

Responding to the recent academic view which treats Japonisme not only in an artistic context but more widely as a cultural trend including literature and religion, the collection includes a number of articles from non-artistic periodicals, and along with the major figures of art critics and collectors of Japanese art such as Alcock, Jarves, Anderson, Huish, Liberty, Bignon, and Frye, more general authors' writings are selected, including many reviews, commentaries of art exhibitions, papers about various types of Japanese arts, crafts and architecture and international exhibitions in London.

With an introduction and forward by Margaret F. Macdonald, this is an indispensable collection of primary materials not only for research into the history of art, but also for research into the Anglo-Japanese cultural relationship of this period.