Feng Menglong
The "huaben" came into its own in the late Ming reign of the Wanli Emperor (r. 1572–1620). By the early 1600s, prosperity had increased the number of schools and commercial publishing houses, also increasing competition to pass the examinations. Many educated men could not obtain official positions and so turned instead to writing for the market. Feng Menglong (1574–1646) and Ling Mengchu (1580–1644) found themselves in just this position. As educated scholars with considerable literary talents but no means of support, they collected and edited earlier stories and wrote new ones which appealed to the new public. Although they used the storytellers' oral conventions of the earlier "huaben", their new stories were sophisticated and self-conscious works of art to which these authors proudly signed their names, rather than publishing anonymously, as did the novelists.