Xu Wei
A modern typeset edition of Xu Wei's collected works, "Xu Wei ji", was published by the Zhonghua Publishing House in Beijing in 1983. Previously a 17th-century edition of his collected works known as the "Xu Wenchang sanji" was reproduced in Taiwan in 1968. In 1990 a book length study of Xu Wei concludes that Xu Wei can be seen as the quintessential “scholar in cotton clothes” or "buyi wenren" (布衣文人), a scholar who could not pass the civil service examination, yet became active in the realm of literature and cultural achievement. Many such individuals appeared in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and attached themselves to successful officials or became independent in late Ming China.