This compelling account of collaboration in the genre of ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world) offers a new approach to understanding the production and reception of print culture in early modern Japan. It provides a corrective to the perception that the ukiyo-e tradition was the product of the creative talents of individual artists, revealing instead the many identities that made and disseminated printed work. Julie Nelson Davis demonstrates by way of examples from the later eighteenth century that this popular genre was the result of an exchange among publishers, designers, writers, carvers, printers, patrons, buyers, and readers. By recasting these works as examples of a network of commercial and artistic cooperation, she offers a nuanced view of the complexity of this tradition and expands our understanding of the dynamic processes of production, reception, and intention in floating world print culture.

Four case studies give evidence of what constituted modes of collaboration among artistic producers in the period. In each case Davis explores a different configuration of collaboration: that between a teacher and a student, two painters and their publishers, a designer and a publisher, and a writer and an illustrator. Each investigates a mode of partnership through a single work: a specially commissioned print, a lavishly illustrated album, a printed handscroll, and an inexpensive illustrated novel. These case studies explore the diversity of printed things in the period ranging from expensive works made for a select circle of connoisseurs to those meant to be sold at a modest price to a large audience. They take up familiar subjects from the floating world―connoisseurship, beauty, sex, and humor―and explore multiple dimensions of inquiry vital to that dynamic culture: the status of art, the evaluation of beauty, the representation of sexuality, and the tension between mind and body.

Where earlier studies of woodblock prints have tended to focus on the individual artist, Partners in Print takes the subject a major step forward to a richer picture of the creative process. Placing these works in their period context not only reveals an aesthetic network responsive to and shaped by the desires of consumers in a specific place and time, but also contributes to a larger discussion about the role of art and the place of the material text in the early modern world.

这部关于浮世绘体裁中的合作的引人注目的描述，为理解现代早期日本印刷文化的生产和接收提供了一种新的方法。它纠正了浮世绘传统是个别艺术家创作才能的产物的看法，而是揭示了制作和传播印刷品的多种身份。朱莉-尼尔森-戴维斯通过18世纪后期的例子证明，这种流行的流派是出版商、设计师、作家、雕刻家、印刷商、赞助人、买家和读者之间交流的结果。通过将这些作品重塑为商业和艺术合作网络的例子，她对这一传统的复杂性提出了细致入微的看法，并扩大了我们对浮动世界印刷文化中生产、接收和意图的动态过程的理解。

四个案例研究证明了这一时期的艺术生产者之间的合作模式是什么。在每个案例中，戴维斯都探讨了不同的合作方式：一个老师和一个学生、两个画家和他们的出版商、一个设计师和一个出版商，以及一个作家和一个插画家之间的合作。每个案例都通过一件作品来研究一种合作模式：一件特别委托的印刷品、一本奢华的插图画册、一本印刷手卷和一本廉价的插图小说。这些案例研究探讨了这一时期印刷品的多样性，从为精选的鉴赏家圈子制作的昂贵作品到旨在以适度的价格出售给广大读者的作品。他们从漂浮的世界中选取了熟悉的主题--鉴赏力、美、性和幽默，并探讨了对这种动态文化至关重要的多个层面的问题：艺术的地位、对美的评价、对性的表现，以及身心之间的紧张关系。

早期对木版画的研究倾向于关注艺术家个人，而《版画伙伴》将这一主题向前推进了一大步，对创作过程进行了更丰富的描述。将这些作品置于其时代背景中，不仅揭示了一个响应并由特定地点和时间的消费者的欲望所塑造的审美网络，而且还有助于对艺术的作用和物质文本在早期现代世界的地位进行更广泛的讨论。