Biographies of Exemplary Women


The Biographies of Exemplary Women is a book compiled by the Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang c. 18 BCE. It includes 125 biographical accounts of exemplary women in ancient China, taken from early Chinese histories including Chunqiu, Zuozhuan, and the Records of the Grand Historian. The book served as a standard Confucianist textbook for the moral education of women in traditional China for two millennia.

Description

The idealized biographies are divided into eight scrolls, including the eighth addendum from an unknown editor, as shown below.
ChapterChineseTranslation
1母 儀 傳Matronly Models
2賢 明 傳The Worthy and Enlightened
3仁 智 傳The Benevolent and Wise
4貞 順 傳The Chaste and Obedient
5節 義 傳The Principled and Righteous
6辯 通 傳The Accomplished Speakers
7孽 嬖 傳Depraved Favorites
8續 列 女 傳Supplemental Biographies

This book follows the lièzhuàn biographical format established by the Chinese historian Sima Qian. The word liènǚ is sometimes understood as liènǚ, which Neo-Confucianists used to mean a "woman who commits suicide after her husband's death rather than remarry; woman who dies defending her honor".
The online Chinese Text Initiative at the University of Virginia provides an e-text edition of the Lienü Zhuan, including both digitized Chinese content and images of a Song dynasty woodblock edition with illustrations by Gu Kaizhi of the Jin dynasty.

Biographies included

  1. The mother of Mencius
  2. Zheng Mao
  3. Consort Ban,, Scholar and poet
  4. Empress Zhao Feiyan , empress from 16 BCE until 7 BCE
  5. Empress Wang , last empress of the Western Han
  6. Empress Ma , empress from 60 CE until her death in 79 CE