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There's plenty of Chinese calligraphy for the eye to dance over: fluid, angular, stiff, or scratchy. The accompanying texts -- two introductory essays on calligraphic history and theory and eight specialized ones, with various levels of detail -- allow readers to choose their own depth. But the visual "text" alone is illuminating and provides pleasure. The 55 featured works, dating from 270 to the 1870s, are divided into seven groups, with short historical introductions preceding the works (reproduced in color and nuanced duotone). Four hundred more illustrations, including character comparisons, are enormously helpful, as is the labeling of the parts of a 12-foot scroll assembled over several centuries around a traced copy of a two-line fragment of a letter by the most influential calligrapher of all, Wang Hsi-chih. --Joseph Newland Relating to The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy

Chinese Calligraphy:
From Pictograph to Ideogram:
The History of 214 Essential Chinese/Japanese Characters
by Edoardo Fazzioli
Hardcover (1987)

Four Thousand Years of Chinese Calligraphy
by Leon Long-Yien Chang, Peter Miller
Hardcover (1990)

This is an interesting, although a very basic book about CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY: FROM PICTOGRAPH TO IDEOGRAM, by Eduardo Fazzioli. Chinese characters are in common use today, and are called Seal Script. As a student of both Chinese painting and calligraphy, I have spent a great deal of my time practicing a character in a nine-square grid in order to get the spacing and composition of the character correct, just as children in China do every day. Only then is it permitted to be more "artistic" with my calligraphy.

From Book News, Inc. , June 1, 1992
With the help of some 300 illustrations, including some rare and never-before-published examples, the authors survey the leading calligraphers and calligraphic works of each age, from the most recent through successive dynasties back to the origins of the Chinese written language some 4,000 years ago. Calligraphers and works are discussed with special attention to brushstroke technique, composition, and the art of space.
Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Outlines of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives: An Alphabetical Compendium of Antique Legends and Beliefs, As Reflected in the Manners and Customs by Charles Alfred Speed Williams Paperback (1977)	A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols: Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought by Wolfram Eberhard Paperback (1988)
Precise, academic and completely accessible for literally anyone, Outlines is the perfect reference work for an aspiring beginner. It is illustrated in black-and-white where illustrations might be expected, all specific terms are followed by the Chinese hieroglyphs, and, overall, this seems to be a very solid and well-written work.	Book Description This unique and authoritative guide describes more than 400 important Chinese symbols, explaining their esoteric meanings and connections. Their use and development in Chinese literature and in Chinese custom and attitudes to life are traced lucidly and precisely.

Mi Fu, one of the most celebrated figures in the history of Chinese art, was a prominent calligrapher in eleventh-century China. In this book Peter Sturman examines Mi Fu's calligraphy within the framework of the artist's fascinating life, the Northern Song culture in which he lived, and the literati theory of art he helped to formulate.