Su Hsueh-lin (189 7-), poet, novelist, and shortstory writer. She also was noted for her scholarly studies of T'ang poetry and comparative mythology. Little is known about Su Hsueh-lin's family background or early life except that she was born in Taiping, Anhwei, and that she had three brothers and a sister. She received her early education at home, where she studied the Chinese classics and learned to compose verse in the traditional style. At the age of 15, she enrolled at the Anhwei Provincial First Normal School. After graduation in 1919 and a brief period as a teacher at the Anking Experimental Primary School, she entered the Peking Women's Higher Normal School.

At the Anking Experimental Primary School Su Hsueh-lin had met the writer Lu Yin, (Huang Lu-yin, q.v.), who had quickened Su's interest in writing. The two girls studied together at Peking from mid- 1919 to mid- 1921. It was the height of the Literary Revolution, and students who had recently returned from study abroad were lionized. Su, desiring to emulate these young intellectuals, applied for and won a scholarship for study and travel in France. So unprecedented for a girl was such a resolve in 1921 that Su did not inform her mother of her plans until the night before her departure.

In the autumn of 1921 Su Hsueh-lin enrolled at the Universite d'Outre-Mer de Lyon, where she remained for four years and devoted herself to the study of literature and fine arts. She was successful as a student, but her life in France was marked by a series of crises. First of all, a fellow student proposed marriage to her, but she felt bound to honor the engagement arranged by her parents to a young man she had never met. Next, one of her brothers died. Finally, she became seriously ill. During her illness she was cared for by Roman Catholic nuns and by her friend Pei Lang, a Catholic convert. Pei induced her to study Catholic doctrine. At first Su's interest in Catholicism was almost purely aesthetic. As an artist she admired the Catholic Church's ceremonies and solemn music, but as an intellectual she declined to accept its teachings. In 1924 Su's mother fell ill and was believed to be dying. Su vowed that she would convert to Catholicism if her mother's life were spared. She immediately joined the Catholic Church on hearing of her mother's unexpected recovery. In 1925 Su returned to China and submitted to an arranged marriage. Having spent four years in France, Su Hsueh-lin was well-qualified to embark on a career of teaching and writing. On her return she went to Soochow, where she taught Chinese at the Laurel Haygood Normal School and the Chen Hua Girls Middle School. She then taught Chinese literature at Shanghai University, Soochow University, and Anhwei University. In 1931 she became professor of Chinese literature at Wuhan University. Except for the war years, which she spent at Loshan, Szechwan, she held the Wuhan post until 1949. As a teacher of literature Su Hsueh-lin was most interested in poetry. Her first published work of scholarship was Li Shang-yin lien-ai shih-chi k'ao [the love life of Li Shang-yin], which appeared in 1927. An epochal work, Su's treatise dispelled much of the obscurity surrounding this T'ang poet's writings. She argued that many of them were love poems addressed to Taoist nuns and other inaccessible women; they thus were couched in heavily allusive language that could be deciphered only through painstaking research into Taoist myth. Su produced a volume of criticism, T'o-yü ti sheng-huo [life of a bookworm], in 1929 and two literary studies, T'ang-shih kai-lun [introduction to T'ang poetry] and Liao-Chin-Yüan wen-hsüeh [literature of Liao, Chin, and Yuan dynasties], in 1934. In 1941, during her wartime exile in Loshan, she published Nan-Ming chung-lieh chuan [biographies of Southern Ming loyalists], studies of Ming supporters who had died fighting the invading Manchus in the midseventeenth century. A collection of literary studies, the Ch'ing-niao chi [bluebird], appeared in 1945. Three years later, she wrote an article in English, "Present-Day Fiction and Drama in China," for a work entitled 1500 Modern Chinese Novels and Plays. A 40-page history of fiction and drama from the time of the May Fourth Movement to 1948, Su Hsueh-lin's article demonstrated her sound critical sense and her thorough knowledge of modern Chinese literature.

Su Hsueh-lin also achieved recognition as a writer of poetry and fiction. Her earliest published work was a series of poems entitled Hsiang-ts'un tsa-shih [home], which appeared in the literary supplement of the Ch'en-pao when she was studying in France. On her return to China, Su contributed poems, short stories, and topical articles to Yü-ssu [thread of talk] and Hsin-yüeh yüeh-k''an [crescent moon monthly]. In 1928 she published Lü-t'ien [green skies], a collection of stories about the joys of home and married life. Her most successful work, Chi-hsin [the bitter heart], a fictionalized account of her troubled years as a student in France, appeared in" 1928. T'u-lung chi [the dragon slayer], a collection of stories, was published in 1941. In 1 946 Chiu-na-lo ti yen-ching [the eyes of Kunala] was published; it consisted of two plays: the title piece, which was a retelling of the Phaedra myth in an Indian setting; and Mei-kuei yü ch'un [roses and spring], an allegory of sacred and profane love. About this time, Su completed her San-shui chi [the cicada's shell], in which she retold a number of stories of the old Ming loyalists in the traditional narrative style.

When the Chinese Communists took control of the mainland in 1949, Su Hsueh-lin went to Hong Kong, where she edited tracts for the Catholic Truth Society. In 1950 she went to Paris, where she spent two years studying comparative mythology. She went to Taiwan in July 1952 as professor of Chinese literature at Taiwan Provincial Normal College, later assuming part-time status so as to allow more time for research. In the early 1 950's she focussed her attention on the myths of pre-Han China, especially those of the state of Ch'u as reflected in the Ch'u-tz'u [elegies of Ch'u]. The K'un-lun chih mi [the riddle of K'un-lun] of 1957 advanced the thesis that many of the puzzling myths in the Ch'u-tz'u, including mention of the sacred mountain of K'un-lun, can be explained only by reference to myths of the ancient Near East and Europe, a phenomenon which suggests early contact between China and the West. The wars waged by Alexander the Great in the fourth decade of the fourth century B.C. were regarded by Su as being responsible for the migration of peoples eastward and the subsequent enrichment of the culture of the state of Ch'u. In 1957 she published T'ien-ma chi [Pegasus], which dealt with Greek mythology. An anthology, Su Hsueh-lin hsüan-chi, was published in Taiwan in 1961.