Guyi congshu 古逸叢書

Guyi congshu 古逸叢書 "Collectanea of ancient lost books" is a series of collectanea (congshu 叢書) compiled by the late Qing-period 清 (1644-1911) master Li Shuchang 黎庶昌 (1837-1897). In includes 26 books with a total size of 198 juan.

Li Shuchang, courtesy name Chunzhai 蒓齋, hailed from Zunyi 遵義, Guizhou, and spent from 1881 on several years in Japan, where he became a student of Yang Shoujing 楊守敬 (1839-1915), from which he learnt to collect, evaluate and republish ancient prints of rare books. His series includes a rare, large-character print of the glossary Erya 爾雅 from Sichuan, a Japanese edition of the collected commentaries Lunyu jijie 論語集解 from the Sōhei reign-period 正平 (1347-1370) and fragments of a manuscript of the Wenguan cilin 文館詞林. None of these could be found anywhere in China.

The title of the series is not strictly correct because some texts like Cai Mengbi's 蔡夢弼 edition of the poems of Du Fu 杜甫 (712-770) or Nanhua zhengjing zhushu 南華真經注疏 are also to be found in Chinese editions. The preface is followed by a descriptive table of contents with notes on each text. The series was printed by the Jiangsu Guanshuju Press 江蘇官書局, but the edition was of minor quality. A qualitative edition was published in 1884 by a printing shop in Tōkyō.

Between 1922 and 1938, Zhang Yuanji 張元濟 (1867-1959) published – in various editions – sequels to the Guyi congshu called Xu guyi congshu 續古逸叢書. The largest version includes 46 texts. Zhang is famous for his series of rare prints Sibu congkan 四部叢刊. The sequel includes facsimiles of Song-period 宋 (960-1279) prints that survived as solitary copies (guben 孤本). The edition of 1957 added the collected works of Du Fu, Du Gongbu ji 杜工部集.

1982, the Zhonghua Shuju Press 中華書局 began to put together rare Song- and Yuan-period 元 (1279-1368) prints owned by Chinese libraries – mainly the Beijing Library 北京圖書館 - to form a second sequel, Guyi congshu sanbian 古逸叢書三編, which was finalized in 1987. It includes 43 texts in 44 book cases. The selection of texts was carried out under the direction of Zhao Shouyan 趙守儼 (1926—1994) and Fu Xinian 傅熹年 (b. 1933). This collection, too, includes precious Song- and Yuan-period prints like a Southern Song print from Hangzhou 杭州, Zhejiang, of the Wangyou qingle ji 忘憂清樂集, a Southern-Song solitary edition of the Jinshilu 金石錄, or fragments of an edition of the Da-Tang liudian 大唐六典 from the Shaoxing reign-period 紹興 (1131-1162).