Book cover: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms

These covers belong to an edition of the celebrated Chinese Novel Romance of the Three kingdoms. They were collected in Singapore in 2018, but were published in Hong Kong sometime in the past century.

A previous owner has written the numbers of the volumes on the set. The one on the right has 二 Volume 2 (near the prow of the boat), and the one on the left has 四, Volume 4 ( Near the arm of the reclining figure).  In traditional Chinese bookbinding, it is not uncommon for an longer work (like this)  to be split up into smaller volumes of "Fascicles"

The two covers are done in a charming style that is seldom encountered today. Both covers bear the same three lines of Chinese text: 

繡像仿宋完整版

三國志演義

香港五桂堂書局印行

(Illustrated, Imitation Song complete edition)

THE ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS:

Published by Wu Gui Tang bookshop, Hong Kong. 

This requires some explaining. The word translated as "illustrated" is 繡像 xiùxiàng literally meaning "Embroidered". Chinese novels often had illustrations of the characters. These illustrations were rendered in line-work, and hence figuratively referred to as 'embroidery'. These illustrations comprise part of the book's "Front matter" , and would be found in volume 1 of the set.   As I possess only volumes 2 and 4, I cannot show you the illustrations (if they existed)

The "imitation Song" probably refers to a family of Chinese typefaces, in which the book is set. 

This image (and the next) are the first two pages of the fourth volume of the set. The text shown is the first part of the 91st chapter of the novel. Like many Traditional Chinese books, the text here reads Right-to-left, in vertical columns. The title of the chapter, (1st line from right) and the first word of the chapter ( topmost character in the 2nd row from the Right) are set in larger type than the rest of the novel

The text is densely set. Unlike in modern texts, The only punctuation used are dots.