The Steed Resting at the Manger: A Collection

The Collected Works of Fu Li is a collection of essays by the renowned contemporary bibliographer and textual scholar Shen Jin, who, past seventy, still "keeps his old steed at the manger, his heart set on rare books," researching rare editions and writing about figures in the field. The several dozen essays gathered here fall into four parts. The first portrays celebrated figures such as Zhang Yuanji, Gu Tinglong, Qu Fengqi, Zhao Wanli, and Lin Zhangsong, touching on major works, institutions, and events including the Catalogue of the Remaining Books of the Hanfenlou, the Weekly Records of the Rare Books Section, the Hezhong Library, the Tieqin Tongjian Tower, the Beijing Library, and the Chinese Calligraphers' Delegation's first visit to Japan. The second consists of prefaces written for influential books and conference speeches, helping readers better appreciate the value and significance of works such as Records of Past Dreams and Shadows, the Illustrated Catalogue of Chinese Books in Japan, and the Catalogue of Tianlu Linlang Books Known and Seen, as well as the International Symposium on the Organization of Chinese Rare Books and Textual Bibliography. The third comprises notes on the study of rare editions, brief in length yet full of penetrating insight. The fourth offers thirty descriptive accounts, written on commission, of Chinese classics printed in Japan and held in the Harvard-Yenching collections; following the "Harvard bibliographic model," they reveal the form, content, characteristics, and value of Japanese-printed Chinese books and serve as a model for bibliographic writing. The book is interspersed with numerous images of rare books and photographs of people, making it all the more vivid through the combination of text and illustration.