舒梦兰

Shu Menglan is known mainly through the ci manuals he compiled; reliable public sources give no clear record of his birth and death dates, native place, or career. Six of his works are held in this collection, the best known being Bai Xiang Ci Pu (Bai Xiang's Guide to Ci Tunes) in its various editions and combined volumes, as well as a national-studies reader pairing it with Gu Shi Yuan. Classified under classical poetry and literary appreciation, the book presents selected ci poems as tune patterns, marking tonal and rhyme schemes so that beginners can write ci to the tunes and chant them correctly. It has long been regarded as an important primer for the study of ci and is widely read among poetry lovers. Because biographical details are lacking, this note limits itself to the subject matter, editorial method, and influence of his surviving works and makes no conjectures beyond them.