Fāng Shísūn 方實孫 (lifedates not securely recorded; fl. mid-thirteenth century, late Lǐzōng / early Dùzōng), zì Duānzhòng 端仲. Native place plausibly Fújiàn per Fújiàn tōngzhì 149.31b reference. CBDB id 20436. Father-in-law: Liú Guāngshū 劉光叔 (CBDB id 20437).
The Sìkù tiyao on his Yì-work explicitly registers “one does not know whence he comes from” — biographical record obscure beyond Liú Kèzhuāng 劉克莊’s references in the latter’s collected works.
Career: submitted his Yì shuō (= KR1a0060 Cóngshān dú Zhōuyì) to the Lǐzōng court c. 1258; admitted in commoner-status (bùyī 布衣) to the Shǐjú 史局 (Historiographical Bureau). The contemporary chief minister, on account of his repeated submission of memorials, wished to have him exempted from the spring-office requirement; Fāng Shísūn responded in the negative; he was then dismissed by the fēngwén (rumor-and-hearsay) procedural mechanism and “returned hàorán [in flowing-vast spirit].” His ultimate fate is unrecorded.
Within the Kanripo corpus he is the author of KR1a0060 Cóngshān dú Zhōuyì 淙山讀周易 (also titled Cóngshān dú Zhōuyì jì 淙山讀周易記; 21 juan in the Sìkù base, with Sòngzhì recording 8 juan, Dànshēngtáng 10 juan, Jùlètáng 16 juan; one of the multiple-juan-reckoning works of the Sòng Yì corpus). Composed by 1258 (Bǎoyòu 6, third-month-first-day auto-preface).
Methodologically a late-Lǐ-zōng-period Zhū-Cài-school xiàng-shù-and-textual-criticism synthesizer. His Yì guàbiàn hé tú 易卦變合圖 is a methodologically clean integration of Zhū Xī’s guàbiàn (hexagram-transformation) materials into a single visualizable structure, supplementing the Yì xué qǐméng’s incomplete coverage.