Songling Pu

Pu Songling (1640–1715) was a Chinese writer of the early Qing dynasty, born in Zichuan in Shandong province. He passed the first level of the imperial examinations at nineteen and then failed the provincial examination at every attempt for more than forty years, supporting himself as a private tutor. In those decades he wrote the nearly five hundred tales of Liaozhai zhiyi, known in English as Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, in which fox spirits, ghosts and Taoist adepts move through the ordinary world of scholars and farmers. The collection circulated in manuscript and was printed only in 1766, half a century after his death.