Chinese · 1763–1825
Shen Fu was a minor figure who left one book and almost no other trace. Born in Suzhou to a family of private secretaries, he worked as a yamen clerk, a failed merchant and a painter of fans, drifting between postings and borrowing money. At seventeen he married his cousin Chen Yun, who read poetry, dressed as a man to see a temple festival with him, and tried to find her husband a concubine. His family drove them out of the household; she died in 1803 in a rented room in Yangzhou, in debt. Around 1809 Shen Fu wrote six autobiographical chapters about the marriage, about gardens and flower arrangement, about misfortune, and about travel. The manuscript was found in a Suzhou bookstall in the 1870s with the last two chapters missing and printed in 1877. Lin Yutang translated it into English in 1935 and called Chen Yun one of the loveliest women in Chinese literature.