Appreciation of Li Wenzhong's Complete Works

Although the Complete Works of Li Hongzhang compiled by Wu is too brief, and it is inevitable to be true and fair because he is eager to defend the master and stop slander, it still has great value before the publication of the newly compiled Complete Works of Li Hongzhang, because the editors are all students and cronies of the master, and most of his deeds are heard with his own ears. In particular, when editing and publishing Li Wenji, a large-scale data collection was conducted. Judging from the existing manuscripts, except for some memorials, which could not be collected objectively by the editors at that time due to political and time constraints, the number of lost articles was not much, and all the collected manuscripts amounted to/kloc-0.78 billion words, and the editors did textual research and collation one by one.

Gong Quan Shu, edited by Wu, also has obvious shortcomings, mainly in three aspects:

One is the loss of harvest.

The newly compiled Complete Works of Li Hongzhang has more than 26 million words (excluding the table of contents), while Wu's Gong Quan Shu has less than 7 million words, which is only178 million words in terms of its collection, which is nearly10 million words different from the former.

Second, pruning.

Compared with Li Hongzhang's manuscripts in Shanghai Library, it is more difficult for Wu to edit The Book of Public Rights. The manuscripts deleted from Li Wenzhong Gongquan Book account for two-thirds of all manuscripts! After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Li Hongzhang was defeated and made peace, which caused people's reviling. At this time, I am determined to compile the complete works for Li, in order to show people the painstaking efforts and embarrassment that Li Hongzhang has made over the years to support the crisis and seek prosperity. The purpose of Wu Rulun's compilation of Li Wenzhong's Gong Quan Shu is to complete this work. Therefore, all manuscripts that meet this purpose are included in the compilation, and all manuscripts that do not meet the requirements of this purpose are deleted.

The third is change.

When compiling Li's manuscript, the method of abridgement and occasional collation was adopted, which was suspected of tampering with history.