Scholarly career

Yu Yue hailed from Deqing, Zhejiang, and later moved to Renhe, now a subdistrict of Hangzhou.

In 1850, Yu passed the imperial examination as metropolitan graduate, and was appointed junior compiler in the Hanlin Academy.

He then served successively in a variety of academic posts in the imperial bureaucracy, and was later promoted to educational instructor of Henan, not long before his resigning from this position and withdrawing to Suzhou, where he became a private teacher and devoted himself full-time to classical studies.

From 1868 on, he was director of the Gujing Academy (詁經精舍), which he headed for more than 30 years.

Yu's analyses of the classics are widely admired for their philological acumen, and he has had a large influence on both Chinese and foreign students of the Chinese classics, particularly in Japan.

Notable thoughts

Yu's philosophy was inclined to the teachings of Wang Niansun and Wang Yinzhi, who interpreted Confucian classics in a practical way.

In the 1860s, Yu was intimately involved in restoring the Gujing Academy, a sishu (private academy) established by Ruan Yuan in 1800 yet destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion.

As opposed to the then dominant goal of education—namely education as pathway towards an official career—Yu aimed to provide a non-political environment for classics studies and stressed philology and historical research during his teaching, an intellectual tradition initiated by Gu Yanwu and Dai Zhen.

Yu allowed considerable freedom in readings of texts, which to a great extent stimulated Zhang Taiyan's creative thinking and developments to classical writings. He believed that the most important techniques in rendering the classics readable for contemporary readers were restoring original word and sentence orders (sometimes altered in transmission), establishing the proper senses of individual words, and most importantly being more aware of the use of phonetic loan words. Yu believed that many of the difficulties encountered in reading the classics were due to a failure to recognize the use of loan characters—an often quite challenging task, requiring an intimate knowledge of ancient Chinese phonology—and in his commentaries, he often raises the possibility of this phenomenon to suggest alternate readings.

He memorably remarked that 「holding a book transmitted and printed today and treating it as the true version of the ancients is like hearing people say that bamboo shoots are good to eat, and going home and cooking one's bed mat」 (執今日傳刻之書, 而以. 爲是古人之眞本, 譬猶聞人言筍可食, 歸而煮其簀也)..

Yu maintained links with both the traditional philological school and scholars of new thoughts—to name a few, Song Xiangfeng and Zhuang Cunyu from Changzhou, who explored political messages carried in classics including the Gongyang Commentary and the Spring and Autumn Annals. He also exchanged ideas with late-Qing reformers like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. Liang referred to Yu as one of the few orthodox scholars that survived the academic downfall during this period, yet Yu was actually not very much stuck into the so-called orthodox Confucianism: unlike Kang Youwei's speculative method in interpreting the Analects, Yu supported a more textual and factual approach; furthermore, instead of focusing merely on Confucian thoughts, Yu tended to put more emphasis on the Hundred Schools of Thought, which decentered the Confucian hegemony in the pre-Qin period.

Major works

• Qunqing Pingyi — analysis and commentaries on Confucian classics, in which Yu followed the scholarly approach of Wang Yinzhi's work Jingyi Shuwen.

• Zhuzi Pingyi — a collection of works of the pre-Qin masters and philosophers. It includes Yu's analysis and commentaries to the Daoist writings Baopuzi and Huainanzi, the legalist classics Hanfeizi and Gongsun Longzi, as well as to the histories Songshiyi and Yizhoushu.

• Gushu Yiyi Juli — scholarly work on 88 systematic errors that were commonly seen in the interpretation of classical texts as a consequence of a different understanding of grammar or words. Point-by-point analyses to these errors were given by Yu. The book received great attention when it was published.

• The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants (Qixia Wuyi) — a high-class version of the popular romance Sanxia Wuyi, revised by Yu under the standards of written literature of his time. The revision was published in 1889.

Youtaixianguan Biji — an important Classical Chinese novel of the late-Qing period that very much reflected Yu's modernity consciousness.

• Chunzaitang Quanshu, an eight-volume collection of Yu's works, which also compiled other notable publications of Yu, including:

Chaxiangshi Congchao — scholarly notes

Chunzaitang Suibi — essays

Liangzhe Fengyongji, vol. 4 — artistic essays

Quyuan Zishu Shi — poems

Yu Quyuan Suibi — essays

Yu Yue Zhaji Wuzhong — essays

生平

道光三十年（1850年）庚戌科二甲第19名賜進士出身。當時曾國藩是閱卷官，俞樾試帖詩的頭一句「花落春仍在，天時尚艷陽」，得到曾國藩的大加賞識，認為詠落花而無衰瑟之意。

曾經擔任翰林院編修、國史館協修，後受咸豐皇帝賞識，咸豐五年（1855年）任河南學政。次年因為御史曹登庸劾奏「試題割裂經義」，因而罷官。從此不再出仕。

清光緒元年（1875年），俞樾得友人資助買下蘇州一塊廢地，如曲尺形，他親自設計，利用彎曲的地形鑿池疊石，栽花種竹，建屋30餘楹，取《老子》「曲則全」句意，俞樾將其命名為「曲園」，自號曲園居士。晚年在杭州詁經精舍講學。其弟子有章炳麟、吳昌碩等人。

俞樾在近代日本很受推崇，甚至與李鴻章、曾國藩相提並論。

孫俞陛雲光緒二十四年中探花，《清史稿》編撰者之一，文學也有很高造詣。曾孫俞平伯，現代學者，紅學家。族人俞恆潤、俞恆澤、俞奎垣皆進士。

光緒32年（1906年）秋末，俞樾在受當時江蘇巡撫陳夔龍所託書寫並雕刻《楓橋夜泊》詩碑，現位於南京總統府煦園東長廊南端小亭，及蘇州寒山寺。

主要著作

俞樾平生勤奮治學，著作極豐，曾國藩讚揚他「拼命著書」，有《春在堂全書》，二百五十卷。

• 《諸子平議》

• 《群經平議》

• 《古書疑義舉例》

• 《春秋外傳國語平議》

• 《爾雅平議》

• 《墨子平議》

• 《春在堂隨筆》

• 《小浮梅閒話》

• 《右台仙館筆記》

• 《茶香室雜鈔》

文學著作:

• 《七俠五義》

醫學著作:

• 《內經辨言》