Yuán □ 袁□ (also known as Bǎisuì lǎorén 百歲老人, “Centenarian”)
The unnamed Sòng author of KR3l0056 Fēngchuāng xiǎodú 楓窗小牘. The Sìkù compilers, following the Míng-era preface of Yáo Shìlín 姚士粦, could establish only the following:
- Surname Yuán 袁, by the author’s own quotation of a Xiān sānlǎo 先三老 entry which can be cross-checked against the Hàn-stele Yuán Liáng bēi 袁良碑 preserved in Hóng Shì 洪适’s Lìshì 隸釋 — the stele belongs to a Yuán-clan ancestor whom the author claims as his own.
- Native of Dàliáng 大梁 (i.e., Biànjīng 汴京 / Kāifēng); the work uses the phrase “as a youth I grew up in Dàliáng”.
- Resident of Línān 臨安 after the 1126/27 fall of Biànjīng — the opening passage of juàn 1 records his hasty river-crossing and refugee residence in the Línān mountains.
- Of an old Biànjīng official family: his great-grandfather was zànshàn dàifū 贊善大夫 Yànfāng 彥方 (named in a Sū Shì 蘇軾 letter); his father held a near-palace official rank and composed an Àiyuèhuátái sòng 萼綠華臺頌 for the Gènyuè 艮嶽 imperial garden; his great-grandmother (zēng wáng dàmǔ) was honoured Xiànjūn 縣君; an uncle (cóngzǔ) served as cǎn of Zhèngzhōu; and a cousin (zǐ) bore the style Bóshì Yí 博士頤.
- Long-lived: the old colophon names him Bǎisuì lǎorén 百歲老人 (Centenarian). Internal references span Chóngníng 5 (1106) court fashion to Jiātài 2 (1202) lunar eclipse — a span of 97 years — corroborating the title. His birth therefore falls c. Yuánfēng — Yuányòu (i.e. early 1080s), with death not before Jiātài 2 (1202).
His given name remains unknowable. Zhā Shènxíng 查慎行 (1650–1727), in his commentary on Sū Shì’s Láihètíng 來鶴亭 poem, identifies the author with the Míng-era Sūzhōu publisher Yuán Jiǒng 袁褧 (CBDB id 35257, Míng dynasty, fl. 16th century, founder of the Jiāqùtáng 嘉趣堂 press) — but as the Sìkù tíyào observes, this is dynastically impossible and the basis of Zhā’s claim is uncertain. Despite this, Zhā’s identification has propagated through later catalogs and is the form one will most often encounter in modern bibliographic references; the catalog meta of the Kanripo corpus retains 袁□ as the honest reading.
For confirmed Yuán-surname Sòng bǐjì authors of comparable date, see 袁說友, 袁采, 袁文; the Fēngchuāng xiǎodú author is not identifiable with any of them.