Quansongci 全宋詞

Quansongci 全宋詞 is a complete collection of lyric-metre-style poetry (ci 詞) from the Song period 宋 (960-1279). It was compiled by Tang Guizhang 唐圭璋 (1901-1990), who also produced the collection Quan Jin-Yuan ci 全金元詞, the series Cihua congbian 詞話叢編 on ci poetry critique, the “anthology dictionary” Tang-Songci jianshang cidian 唐宋詞鑑賞辭典, and the book Songci jishi 宋詞紀事 on the history of ci poetry during the Song period. Apart from his outstanding work on ci poetry, he also compiled a book on aria-style poetry (qu 曲), Yuanren xiaoling gelü 元人小令格律.

During the Ming period 明 (1368-1644), Mao Jin 毛晉 (1599-1659) collected ci poems of sixty eminent writers from the Song period, Song shiliu mingjia ci 宋六十名家詞. Hou Wenshan 侯文灿 (fl. 1674) published the book Shi mingjia ciji 十名家詞集 assembling the ci poems of ten writers, and Qin Enfu 秦恩復 (1760-1843) compiled the series Cixue congshu 詞學叢書 in which studies on lyric-metre poetry are gathered.

Scholars of the late Qing period 清 (1644-1911) intensified the study of the ci-type poetry, and many related publications were produced, like Wang Pengyun's 王鵬運 (1849-1904) Siyizhai suo ke ci 四印齋所刻詞 and Song-Yuan sanshiyi jia ci 宋元三十一家詞, Jiang Biao's 江標 (1860-1899) Song-Yuan mingjia ci 宋元名家詞, Wu Chongxi's 吳重熹 (1838-1918) Shanzuoren ci 山左人詞, Wu Changshou's 吳昌綬 (b. c. 1867) Shuangzhaolou yingke Song-Yuanben ci 雙照樓景刊宋元本詞, Zhu Zumou's 朱祖謀 (1857-1931) Qiangcun congshu 彊村叢書 or Tao Xiang's 陶湘 (1871-1940) Xukan Song-Jin-Yuan-Mingben ci 續刊景宋金元明本詞. In 1931, Zhao Wanli 趙萬里 (1905-1980) revised all these books and published the collection Jiaoji Song-Jin-Yuan ren ci 校輯宋金元人詞 "Critical collection of poems from the Song, Jin and Yuan periods" with a length of 73 juan. This publication was succeeded by Zhou Yongxian's 周泳先 Tang-Song-Jin-Yuan ci gouchen 唐宋金元詞鉤沉 from 1937.

Based on the fundament that these earlier scholars had delivered, Tang Guizhang continued the search for ci-style poetry and combed different types of literature like the collected writings of Song-period authors, essays, encyclopaedias, local gazetteers, tomb stone inscriptions, novellas, forewords or scholarly treatises. In 1940, he published his Quansongci in the Shangwu Yinshu Press 商務印書館 in Changsha, arranged in 300 juan.

In 1965, an enlarged version was published by the Zhonghua Shuju Press 中華書局. It contained some 1,400 poems more, leading to a total amount of 19,900 ci-style poems (plus 530 fragments) written by 1,330 different authors. Tang Guizhang had made use of more than 530 different sources. The arrangement of poems follows older traditions and begins with emperors and members of the court and end with women, Buddhist and Daoist monks, and foreigners. Apart for this basic arrangement, the authors are arranged chronologically.

In 1979, a supplement was published, Quancongci dingbu xuji 全宋詞訂補續記. Kong Fanli 孔凡禮 (1923-2010) added some 430 more poems of 140 persons (41 of which are known from poems included in Tang’s collection) and published a further supplement, Quansongci buji 全宋詞補輯, in 1981 by the Zhonghua Shuju 中華書局.

The Quansongci is an outstanding collection of a literary genre that flourished during a particular period of time, and is thus a twin-collection to the Quantangshi 全唐詩, a complete collection of regular poems (shi 詩) from the Tang period 唐 (618-907).

A selection of outstanding poems was published in 1986 by the Shanghai Guji Chubanshe 上海古籍出版社. The book Quansongci jianbian 全宋詞簡編 includes 1,672 poems of 312 writers.