Zhāng Jí 張籍 (766–830), zì Wénchāng 文昌, was a Hézhōu 和州 native (modern Héxiàn, Ānhuī), of distant Wú origin. He took the jìnshì in Zhēnyuán 15 (799), patronized and recommended by Hán Yù 韓愈, who placed him among his close gǔwén circle (Mèng Jiāo, Zhāng Jí, Lǐ Áo, Huángfǔ Shí). Zhāng held Tàicháng sì tàizhù, Shuǐbù yuánwàiláng (hence the title Zhāng Shuǐbù), and rose to Guózǐ sīyè (Director of the Directorate of Education) — hence Zhāng Sīyè. He suffered from severe eye disease in his middle years, but the tíyào of his collection (KR4c0053) refutes the long-standing tradition that he died blind, citing his elegy for Hán Yù where the master is described as giving him a stylus to inscribe Hán’s final colophon.
Zhāng’s principal claim to literary canonicity is as the foremost practitioner of the new yuèfǔ alongside Wáng Jiàn 王建 — the ZhāngWáng yuèfǔ pairing. Bái Jūyì cites Zhāng explicitly in his theoretical letters on poetry. The Jiéfù yín 節婦吟 (“Song of the Chaste Wife,” addressed to a regional jiédùshǐ who attempted to recruit him) is the most famous individual poem. The principal work in the corpus is Zhāng Sīyè jí KR4c0053 in 8 juǎn, edited in the early Sòng (Zhāng Jì 張洎) and re-edited by Tāng Zhōng. CBDB id 13575. Catalog gives “ca. 765 – ca. 830”; CBDB and standard reference works give 766–830, used here.