Thousand Poems

Author: Wang Xiang (Qing Dynasty)
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2000-02-01
Features: The Thousand Poems is a traditional children's enlightenment reading material. Originally, there were four classics: the Three-Character Classic (San Zi Jing), the Hundred Family Surnames (Bai Jia Xing), the Thousand-Character Classic (Qian Zi Wen), and The Thousand Poems. According to historical records, the earliest known edition of The Thousand Poems was the Selected Thousand Poems of Tang and Song Dynasties, Classified and Compiled edited by Liu Kezhuang during the Song Dynasty. Due to the excessive number of categories and the vast volume of this selection, it was difficult to popularize The Thousand Poems. Therefore, it was renamed The Expanded and Revised Thousand Poems, which became the most popular poetry collection for Confucian education in the Ming and Qing dynasties. This edition is easy to understand and memorize. The Thousand Poems published by our press this time is Wang Xiang's selection. The book includes four types of regulated verse: seven-character quatrains, seven-character regulated poems, five-character quatrains, and five-character regulated poems. A total of 223 poems are selected. The poems are organized by poetic form, with each form further divided into spring, summer, autumn, and winter sections. Except for a few works from the Ming Dynasty, the main collection consists of poems by poets from the Tang and Song dynasties. The selected poets are very diverse, including many famous works by renowned masters. The content is mostly clear and easy to understand, with simple and straightforward language, making it easy to memorize. It stands out as the leading traditional poetry textbook for enlightenment education. Our press has published it in a line-bound edition from the Republican era, with careful layout, illustrations above the text, blue-printed on Xuan paper. We have also made appropriate corrections to errors in the original book. To maintain consistency with the original annotations and text, corrections have been appended to the end of each volume for any misattributed authors in the original edition.