author
Guowei Wang
1877–1927
A brilliant early 20th-century Chinese scholar, poet, and literary critic, he helped bring new methods to the study of China's past while writing with unusual sensitivity about art and feeling. His work still stands out for the way it connects classical learning with modern thought.
1 Audiobook
人間詞話
by Guowei Wang
About the author
Born in Haining, Zhejiang, in 1877, Wang Guowei became one of the most admired Chinese scholars of his era. He is known for important work in ancient history, epigraphy, philology, vernacular literature, and literary theory, as well as for his own poetry. Sources consistently describe him as a remarkably wide-ranging thinker whose scholarship helped reshape modern Chinese studies.
He was especially noted for bringing fresh, sometimes Western-influenced approaches to Chinese history and criticism. Alongside his research, he wrote influential reflections on literature and aesthetics, which helped make him a lasting figure not only in scholarship but also in the history of Chinese criticism.
Wang Guowei died in Beijing in 1927. Even in a relatively short life, he left work that continues to matter to readers interested in Chinese history, poetry, and the life of ideas.