Mei Dingzuo
Life
He was born in Xuancheng. Mei's family consisted of academics and owned a large library of their own. Mei was friends with Tang Xianzu,{{cite book|author=Jing Shen|title=Playwrights and Literary Games in Seventeenth-Century China: Plays by Tang Xianzu, Mei Dingzuo, Wu Bing, Li Yu, and Kong Shangren|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qRLi6_9JUnIC&pg=PA111|date=4 August 2010|publisher=Lexington Books|isbn=978-0-7391-3857-1|pages=95–96}} Wang Shizhen, and Wang Daokun. His teacher was Jiang Qifang. Mei collected books. He would meet with his friends to share books they recently acquired. He failed imperial examinations and became a full-time writer. Mei's hired his own workers to create woodblocks for his books. He also published his books himself.{{cite book|author=Kai-wing Chow|title=Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a-_l3tDB47AC&pg=PA63|year=2004|publisher=Stanford University Press|isbn=978-0-8047-3368-7|pages=63–64}}