The People's Literature Press, established in Beijing in 1951, is a press specializing in literature. It mainly publishes excellent works of contemporary Chinese literature, especially new creations that reflect the real life. It sorts out and publishes works of classical Chinese literature, and representative works in the New Literature since the May 4^th Movement. It systematically introduces famous works of classical foreign literature, and influential works of modern foreign literature. It also publishes various works on literature research.

In the period from its establishment to 1987, it published nearly 8,000 titles of books, some of which were published in the name of foreign literature press or ancient literature book printing and publishing house. Annually it publishes more than 300 titles of books. Of the published books, many have been translated and published by foreign presses, such as the 16 volumes of Lu Xun's collected works (Japanese). In the 1950s, it carried out business exchanges with such socialist countries as the former Soviet Union. In the 1980s, it established cooperative publishing relation with such countries as Japan, the Federal Republic of Germany, the former Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, New Zealand and Singapore and the region of Hong Kong.