Writers › Writer / Poet
Liu E
Late Qing novelist, author of The Travels of Lao Can and compiler of the first oracle-bone catalogue
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Liu Tieyun · Tieyun · Lao Can · Hongdu Bailiansheng
Liu E, originally named Mengpeng, courtesy name Tieyun, whose family came from Dantu in Jiangsu, was born at Luhe in 1857, a late Qing novelist and scholar. He wrote the novel The Travels of Lao Can, one of the four great novels of denunciation of the late Qing, and collected oracle bones, publishing them in 1903 as Tieyun cang gui, the first catalogue of oracle-bone inscriptions. He studied water control and wrote on the Yellow River. Falsely accused, he was exiled to Dihua in Xinjiang, where he died in 1909.
Life and times
Dates 1857 - 1909