Encyclopaedias and Handbooks (leishu lei 類書類)

Encyclopaedias and Handbooks (leishu lei 類書類) is a subcategory in traditional Chinese bibliographies and part of the category of Masters and Philosophers (zibu 子部). The Chinese term leishu designates a book explaining selected topics by quoting ancient literature talking about the respective theme. Most "encyclopaedias" are divided into chapters the sequence and content of which soon obtained a fixed character. They commonly begin with Heaven/sky and astronomy, geography, proceed to a wide range of themes on statecraft and end with objects of daily life as well as zoology and botany. They quote from all kinds of literature, from the Confucian Classics, the histories and the "masters", and a lot of leishu especially focus on poetry. Not a few authors even write their explanations to the particular themes in verses and thus contributed to the development of textbooks written in verses to make learning easier. There are specialized encyclopaedias as well as general encyclopaedias. Except thematic arrangement, some encyclopaedias also arrange keywords phonetically or according to character shape.
The oldest book identified as a leishu was Cao Pi's 曹丕 lost book Huanglan 皇覽. Of the Tang period 唐 (618-907) encyclopaedias, the Beitang shuchao 北堂書鈔, Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚, Chuxueji 初學記 and Baishi liutie 白氏六貼 created the fundaments for later enyclopedias. For modern scholars, the leishu are of great importance because a lot of books quoted are long since lost, so that at least fragments of these books are preserved in the encyclopaedias. Song period 宋 (960-1279) scholars produced a large amount of leishu, of which the four large encyclopaedias (Song si da shu 宋四大書) are very famous. Of these, the Taiping guangji 太平廣記 is actually a collection of stories, and the Wenyuan yinghua 文苑英華 a literary anthology. The most important Ming period 明 (1368-1644) encyclopaedia is the Yongle dadian 永樂大典, Chinas largest encyclopaedia compiled ever, which is only preserved in a few volumes. The Kangxi Emperor 康熙 (r. 1661-1722) had compiled the book Gujin tushu jicheng 古今圖書集成. The encyclopaedias section of the collectanea Siku quanshu 四庫全書 includes 65 books.

* not included in the collectanea Siku quanshu 四庫全書, the catalogue Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 四庫全書總目題要, nor the Xuxiu siku quanshu 續修四庫全書.