Where Have All the Guixiu Gone? Chinese “Women of Talent” at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Abstract Guixiu 閨秀 (cultivated gentlewomen of the inner chambers) and cainü 才女 (women of talent) arguably became authorly identities (referring to women writing in classical verse) as women's literary culture took shape in Ming-Qing China. However, the guixiu and cainü were gradually eclipsed by their rising “modern” sisters, xin nüxing 新女性 (new women) and nü zuojia 女作家 (women writers), during the late-Qing reform (1890s) and the early-Republican New Culture movement (1910s–1920s). This study provides a historical investigation into two cases of the literary practice of men and women who carried the legacy of their Ming-Qing predecessors into the Republican era: Wang Wenru 王文濡 (1867–1935) and his Xiangyan zazhi 香艷雜誌 (Xiangyan Magazine, 1914–1916) and Gu Xianrong 顧憲融 (1901–1955), who published the Hongfan jingshe nü dizi ji 紅梵精舍女弟子集 (Collection of Female Disciples from the Abode of Red Brahman, 1928). They reveal the persistence of guixiu culture in a diversified and transformed world of literary production and consumption from the 1910s to the 1920s.