Lín Shū 林紓 (1852–1924), zì Qíngnán 琴南, hào Wèilú 畏廬 and Lěng Hóng Shēng 冷紅生, was a native of Mǐnhóu 閩侯 (modern Fúzhōu, Fújiàn). He obtained the jǔrén degree in 1882 but never passed the jìnshì examination. He taught classical literature and prose in Fújiàn before moving to Běijīng in the early Republican period, where he held a position at the Jīngshī Dàxuétáng 京師大學堂 (later Peking University).
Lín Shū is one of the most celebrated prose stylists of the late-Qīng period and the foremost translator of Western literature into Literary Chinese (wényán 文言). He produced no fewer than 181 translations — including works by Dickens, Balzac, Tolstoy, Defoe, Scott, and Rider Haggard — working entirely through oral vernacular intermediaries (he knew no Western languages), transforming his collaborators’ renderings into polished classical prose. His translations were commercially published by the Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn 商務印書館 and exercised enormous influence in shaping how educated Chinese readers encountered Western literature. Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual, §5.1.5) calls his method “the old way of relying on young assistants to translate from the source text into vernacular Chinese, which he then transformed into Literary Chinese,” noting he translated 181 novels.
As a committed cultural conservative, Lín Shū opposed the New Culture Movement and the shift to vernacular (bǎihuà) writing, famously clashing with Cài Yuánpéi 蔡元培 and the reformers at Peking University around 1919. Despite his conservatism, his translations paradoxically opened the Chinese literary world to Western fiction. He also wrote original novels, of which KR4k0161 Jīnlíng Qiū 金陵秋 (a historical novel based on the 1911 Nanjing campaign) is the most notable in the Kanripo corpus.
CBDB id 54317 gives birth 1852 and death 1924, citing Qīngdài Rénwù Shēngzú Niánbiǎo (#14141).