Pú Sōnglíng 蒲松齡 (1640–1715), zì Liúxiān 留仙 (also Jiànchén 劍臣) and hào Liǔquán jūshì 柳泉居士 (“the Recluse of Willow-Spring”), of Zīchuān 淄川 (modern Zībó 淄博, Shāndōng). The Qīng-dynasty xiǎoshuō writer of overwhelming canonical importance for the classical-Chinese short story; author of KR3l0130 Liáozhāi zhìyì 聊齋誌異 (491 tales in 12 juàn, written c. 1670–1715), the single most influential post-Sòng zhìguài / chuánqí collection and the principal model for all subsequent literary-Chinese supernatural fiction.
Pú’s career trajectory was profoundly humble: although he passed the prefectural-level tóngshēng 童生 examination as a young man with unusual brilliance (first in three categories), he failed the provincial jǔrén 舉人 examination repeatedly for fifty years, finally attaining the courtesy degree of gòngshēng 貢生 only in 1711 at age 71. He spent his working life as a private tutor and mùyǒu 幕友 — chiefly in the household of Bì Jìyǒu 畢際有 in the village of Xīpū 西鋪 — and supplemented his income by composing examination-essay primers and the vernacular pedagogical text Rìyòng súzì 日用俗字 (1704), a 31-section seven-character primer adapting the Zhuāngnóng zázì 莊農雜字 (cf. Wilkinson §24.2.4 on its place in late-Qīng popular literacy). His own poems and prose are collected in Liáozhāi wénjí 聊齋文集 and Liáozhāi shījí 聊齋詩集; his complete works were edited by Shèng Wěi 盛伟 (Pú Sōnglíng quánjí 蒲松齡全集, 3 vols., Xuélín 1998).
The Liáozhāi zhìyì was composed over approximately forty-five years and exists today in two principal recensions: (a) the author’s autograph manuscript (shǒugǎo běn 手稿本), partially preserved (4 of an original 8 boxed cè) at the Liáoníng Provincial Library and the National Library of China — first photographically reproduced 1955 by the Shānghǎi rénmín / Wénxué gǔjí press, and the basis of the standard textus receptus; (b) the Zhào Qǐgāo 趙起杲 Qīngkētíng 青柯亭 edition (Hángzhōu, 1766), the first printed edition, prepared by Zhào from the autograph 50 years after Pú’s death. The 1766 edition was widely re-engraved and is the basis of most pre-modern circulation; modern critical work since the 1950s favours the autograph.
Standard biographical study: Lǔ Dàhuāng 路大荒, Pú Sōnglíng niánpǔ 蒲松齡年譜 (QíLǔ shūshè, 1980; rev. 1995). Allan H. Barr, “Pu Songling and Liaozhai zhiyi: A Study of Textual Transmission, Biographical Background, and Literary Antecedents,” PhD diss., Oxford, 1983, and Barr’s series of articles in HJAS (1984, 1985, 1986) on Pú’s career and the Liáozhāi manuscript history — these remain the foundational Western-language source-critical scholarship. Judith T. Zeitlin, Historian of the Strange: Pu Songling and the Chinese Classical Tale (Stanford UP, 1993) is the standard English-language literary study. CBDB 65615.