Writers › Writer / Poet
Xu Shu
Eastern Han woman poet from Longxi, wife of Qin Jia, whose reply poem and letters answered his farewell verses and who refused to remarry.
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 Wife of Qin Jia
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Xu Shu, an Eastern Han woman poet from Longxi, is dated only to around 147. Her husband Qin Jia, a commandery clerk, was posted to Luoyang while she was ill and staying with her family, so they could not say goodbye and exchanged poems and letters. She wrote the sao-style Reply to Qin Jia and two letters to him; after his death she refused her brothers' pressure to remarry in an oath letter. Zhong Rong placed the couple in the middle grade of the Shipin and praised their sorrowful words, and the Yutai xinyong records her verse.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active around 147 CE