Hú Wénkǎi 胡文楷
Republican-era textual scholar and bibliographer; lifedates 1894–1976. Native of Pújiāng 浦江, Zhèjiāng. Active under the Republican government and continuing into the early PRC period.
Trained at the Beijing Normal University in the 1910s; held positions at various educational institutions and research libraries. His principal scholarly contributions are in the recovery and critical collation of classical and medieval Chinese texts; he was one of the textual scholars employed by the Sìbù cóngkān 四部叢刊 (SBCK) editorial board under Zhāng Yuánjì 張元濟 (1867–1959) for the recovery of texts not preserved in the Sìkù quánshū. His jiào kān jì 校勘記 (collation notes) for the Republican-era recovery of Lǚ Zǔqiān’s Dōnglái Lǚ tàishǐ Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn lèi biān (KR1e0043) is one of his classical-philology contributions.
His most famous work is the monumental Lìdài fùnǚ zhùzuò kǎo 歷代婦女著作考 (“Examination of Women’s Writings Across the Ages”), originally published 1957 (Shànghǎi shāngwù) — the foundational reference work for the study of premodern Chinese women’s literature, comprising entries on more than 4,000 women writers from the Hàn through the late Qīng. The work has been continuously revised and expanded by subsequent scholars (Zhāng Hóngshēng 張宏生, et al.) and remains the standard reference in its field.
Hú is therefore primarily a Republican-era / PRC-era figure rather than a premodern Chinese person; his appearance in the Kanripo persons list reflects only his role as collator of the SBCK KR1e0043.