Shuoku 說庫

Shuoku 說庫 "Storehouse of stories" is a series of collectanea (congshu 叢書) on short stories and novellas compiled by the Qing-period 清 (1644-1911) scholar Wang Wenxu 王文濡 (1867-1935).

Wang's original name was Wang Chengzhi 王承治, his courtesy name Junqing 均卿, his many styles Xuejia xianmin 學界閑民, Tianrang wanglang 天壤王郎, Wumen laojun 吳門老均, Xinjiu fawu 新舊發物, and his studio name Xinjiuyi 辛臼簃. His ancestors hailed from Guangde 廣德, Anhui, and later moved to Wuxing 吳興 (modern Huzhou 湖州), Jiangsu. In 1883 he passed the provincial examination and was granted a doctoral scholarship as government student (boshi diziyuan 博士弟子員). In fact he worked as an editor in a range of publishing houses, from the Commercial Press 商务印書館 and the Zhonghua Shuju 中華書局 to less prestigious houses as the Dadong Shuju 大東書局, Wenming Shuju 文明書局, Jinbu Shuju 進步書局, Hongwen Shuju 鴻文書局 and the Lequn Shuju 樂群書局. Wang Wenru was also chief editor of the publishing house Guoxue Fulun She 國學扶輪社.

The Shuoku was first published in 1915 as a lithographic print, and then as a facsimile in 1925 by the Wenming Press in Shanghai, in six batches (zhi 帙) in 60 booklets. It includes 170 titles from the Han 漢 (206 BCE-220 CE) to the Qing period. The themes of the books range from theoretical treatises of the early "masters and philosophers" to belles-lettres, history, geography, astronomy, arts, medicine, legal statutes, customs and habits, theatre, and biographies. The Shuoku thus includes books of a very large spectrum of topics and genres.

Wang's principles for the selection of texts were both reliability and universality (zhong shishi, jian zhong guangyi 重事實，兼重廣義). For this reason, he refused, for instance, to include the popular texts Milouji 迷樓記 and Kaiheji 開河記 in his collection. Some scholars call the Shuoku a sister-oeuvre (zimeipian 姊妹篇) to the large collection Biji xiaoshuo daguan 筆記小説大觀.