Lù Zhì 陸贄 (754–805)
Zì Jìngyú 敬輿; posthumous shì Xuān 宣 (whence Xuāngōng 宣公). Native of Wújùn 吳郡 Sūzhōu 蘇州 Lìyáng 溧陽 (modern Lìyáng in Jiāngsū). One of the great political-literary figures of the Dézōng court; conventionally regarded as the most accomplished Tang prose stylist of the official-document genre.
Jìnshì of Dàlì 8 (773) at age 18 (an unusually young examination success); bóxué hóngcí 博學宏辭 in the same year. After early service as Zhèngxiàn wèi 鄭縣尉 and Wèinán bù 渭南簿, he was identified by Dézōng (then Crown Prince) as a major talent and promoted to Hànlín xuéshì 翰林學士. During the Zhū Cī 朱泚 rebellion of 783, when Dézōng was in exile at Fèngtiān 奉天, Lù was the principal court drafter — Quán Déyú 權德輿’s preface to the collection reports that his memoranda were composed extemporaneously without redrafting. After the recovery of the capital he served as zǎixiàng (792–794) at the height of his influence; subsequently demoted to Zhōngzhōu biéjià 忠州別駕 (in modern Chóngqìng) over a factional dispute with Péi Yánlíng 裴延齡, where he died in 805 after eleven years of internal exile.
His extant collection is the Hànyuàn jí KR4c0039 in 22 juǎn — almost entirely official-document prose, the foundational model of Sòng-period zhìgào drafting and of the Sòng kējǔ curriculum’s zhìgào training. Sū Shì 蘇軾 considered it “the model of zhìgào prose for all time.”
CBDB confirms 754–805 (cbdbId 33705).