Songshichao 宋詩鈔

Songshichao 宋詩鈔 is a collection of shi 詩-style poetry from the Song period 宋 (960-1279) compiled by Wu Zhizhen 吳之振 (1640-1717), courtesy name Mengju 孟舉. Wu hailed from Shimen 石門 (modern Chongde 崇德, Zhejiang) and rose the ladder of career to a post in the Palace Secretariat (zhongshusheng 中書省). He was an ardent collector of books, and his collected writings have been published with the title of Huangye cunzhuang shiji 黃葉村莊詩集.

The 106-juan-long Songshichao is the product of a collaboration with Lü Liulang 呂留良 (1629-1683). It includes more than 12,000 poems of one hundred writers, of which 16 are only listed in the index. The Songshichao was the first collection of Song-period shi-style poems at all because earlier scholars connected the genre of shi poems only with the Tang period 唐 (618-907), while the Song period was imagined as the age of lyric-metre poetry (ci 詞). For each author, Wu Zhizhen added a short biography and a critique of his poetry. Authors are arranged chronologically.

There were many various editions of the Songshichao, and some of them are of minor quality, with defective sentences and printing errors. The stanzas of Liu Kezhuang's 劉克莊 (1187-1269) Houcun shiji 後村詩集, for instance, are brought into disorder.

There is a supplement to the Songshichao called Songshichao bu 宋詩鈔補 that was compiled by Guan Tingfang 管庭芳 (1797—1880) and Jiang Guangxu 蔣光煦 (1813-1860) that includes the shi poems of 85 authors (16 of them have been listed in the index of the Songshichao). Some poems of this supplement are derived from the critical collections Songshi jishi 宋詩紀事 by Li E 厲鶚 (1692-1752) and Song baijia shicun 宋百家詩存 by Cao Tingdong 曹庭棟 (1700-1785).

The Songshichao was printed during the Kangxi reign-period 康熙 (1662-1722). A new print was published in 1935 by the Shangwu Yinshuguan Press 商務印書館. The Songshichao bu was published by the same editor in 1915.