Cáo Táng 曹唐 (fl. Tàihé 827–835 onward; zì Yáobīn 堯賓), of Guìlín 桂林 (Guǎngxī). Began as a Daoist priest; in the Tàihé period returned to lay life and took the jìnshì; held cóngshì (regional staff) appointments at various offices.
Cáo’s distinctive contribution is the Yóuxiān shī 遊仙詩 (Wandering-Immortal verse) — modeled on Yán Yánzhī’s 顏延之 Wéi zhīnǚ zèng Qiānniú shī (the Weaving-Maid sends to Cowherd poem) and elaborated into a series of female-immortal exchanges (xiānnǚ responding to Qiānniú, jiāngfēi responding to zhènrén, etc.). The poems were widely anthologized but the Sìkù tíyào judges them not first-rate — the imitations all share the same vocabulary and meaning, varying only the names. The Táng yìwénzhì records his collection at 3 juǎn; Jiǎng Miǎn 蔣冕 in the Míng could not locate the original and reconstructed 1 juǎn from anthological sources, appending it to Cáo Yè 曹鄴’s collection on the principle of shared Yuèxī origin.
Principal work in the corpus: appended Cáo Táng shī in Cáo Cíbù jí KR4c0085. CBDB has no matching entry.