Shen Shanbao
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Shen Shanbao (沈善宝, 1808–1862) courtesy name Xiangpei 湘佩 and style name Xihu sanren 西湖散人 was a Chinese poet and writer active during the Qing Dynasty. She is the author of the Mingyuan Shihua, which provided biographical material on 500 Qing women poets, including herself.
Biography[edit]
She was born in Hangzhou, which in the early nineteenth century was a center for women artists and writers. Shen's father committed suicide in 1819 and her mother died in 1832. She sold her paintings and poetry to support herself. In 1837, in a marriage arranged by her foster mother, she married Wu Lingyun 武凌云, a high official and holder of the jinshi degree (the highest civil service degree). She was Wu's second wife; upon her marriage she became stepmother to his children. After her marriage to Wu, she moved to Beijing.[1]
In Beijing, Shen made contact with a circle of women writers, including Liang Desheng, Xu Yunjiang, Xu Zongyan, Gu Taiqing, Gong Zihang (the sister of Gong Zichen) and Li Peijin.[2] She was also important as a teacher; she was known to have more than a hundred female disciples.[3] She was also friends with the writer Ding Pei, who wrote a preface for her first poetry collection in 1836.
Some of her work has been translated into English.[a]
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Ellen Widmer, The Beauty and the Book: Women and Fiction in Nineteenth Century China. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University East Asia Center, 2006, p.191. An important source for Shen's biography is her own poetry, which is discussed in Grace Fong's "Writing Self and Writing Lives: Shen Shanbao's (1802-1862) Gendered Autobiographical Practices," Nannü 2.2 (2000), pp.259-303.
- ^ Widmer, The Beauty and the Book, p.191.
- ^ Widmer, The Beauty and the Book, pp.157-58, citing Deng Hong Mei 邓红梅, Nüxing cishi 女性词史, Ji'nan: Shandong jiaoshi chubanshe, 2000, p.391.
- ^ Beauty and the Book, pp.142-43, pp.194-204.
- ^ Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism edited by Kang-i Sun Chang and Haun Saussy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, pp.552-555
- ^ "Writing Self and Writing Lives," passim.
Sources[edit]
- "Fong Embroidery Paper", Columbia University, last accessed June 9, 2007
- Wang Lijian王力堅, Qingdai caiyuan Shen Shanbao yanjiu,清代才媛沈善寳研究 (A Study of the Qing Poet Shan Shanbao) Taipei: Liren shuju, 2009.
External links[edit]
- Texts of her poems and references to her (in Chinese) appear in Ming Qing Women Writers Database.
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