Hồ Xuân Hương

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Hồ Xuân Hương (1772-1822) () was a Vietnamese poet born at the end of the Lê Dynasty but grew up in an era of political and social turmoil, the time of the Tây Sơn rebellion. She wrote poetry using the Chữ nôm script. She is considered one of Vietnam's greatest poets, such that she is dubbed "the Queen of Nôm Poetry" by Xuân Diệu, a prominent modern Vietnamese poet.

The facts of her life are difficult to ascertain. Being a concubine ("like the maid/but without the pay") in a Confucian society, her works show her to be an independent-minded woman who resisted societal norms, through her social-political commentaries and use of sexual humour or expressions. Her poems are usually irreverent, full of double entendres, but erudite. The sexual allusions in her work are not hard to figure out, though this may be more a result of the translation.

By composing her works in Nôm instead of in classical Chinese, she helped elevate the status of Vietnamese as a literary language in Vietnamese literature in the 1800s. In modern times, chữ nôm is nearly a dead script having been supplanted by Quốc ngữ during the period of French colonization. For details see Vietnamese language.

Another important Vietnamese poet and her contemporary is Nguyễn Du, who also wrote using chữ nôm.

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