Hồ Xuân Hương
Hồ Xuân Hương (胡春香; 1772–1822) was a Vietnamese poet born at the end of the Lê dynasty. She grew up in an era of political and social turmoil – the time of the Tây Sơn rebellion and a three-decade civil war that led to Nguyễn Ánh seizing power as Emperor Gia Long and starting the Nguyễn dynasty. She wrote poetry using chữ Nôm (Southern Script), which adapts Chinese characters for writing demotic Vietnamese.
Also recorded as Ho Xuan Huong
Hồ Xuân Hương

胡春香,東州阮友進收集,河內,東京印館出版,1916年。(Đông Châu Nguyễn Hữu Tiến:《Giai nhân di mặc》 Hà Nội, 1916). Original uploader was Iflwlou at zh.wikipedia · http: · Public domain
- Born
- 1772. · Vietnam.
- Died
- 1822. · Hanoi.
- Nationality
- Vietnam.
- Occupation
- poet and writer.
- Fields
- poetry.
- Languages
- Vietnamese.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Hồ Xuân Hương (胡春香; 1772–1822) was a Vietnamese poet born at the end of the Lê dynasty. She grew up in an era of political and social turmoil – the time of the Tây Sơn rebellion and a three-decade civil war that led to Nguyễn Ánh seizing power as Emperor Gia Long and starting the Nguyễn dynasty. She wrote poetry using chữ Nôm (Southern Script), which adapts Chinese characters for writing demotic Vietnamese.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
No house-authored Note is published until its assertions and sources pass the VALÉORINE evidence contract. The documentary article remains available in full while that enrichment is being consolidated.
Documentary enrichment in progress · no unsupported statement published
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Hồ Xuân Hương. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Evidence Panel
not yet certified
- Identity
- resolved
- Independent source families
- 0
- Admitted assertions
- 0
- Open conflicts
- 0
Authority files
gnd · 111366313 · wikidata · Q465259 · wikipedia · Hồ Xuân Hương
In this article
Biography
Biography
She is considered to be one of Vietnam's greatest classical poets. Xuân Diệu, a prominent modern poet, dubbed her "The Queen of Nôm poetry".
The facts of her life are difficult to verify, but this much is well established: she was born in Nghệ An province near the end of the rule of the Trịnh lords, and moved to Hanoi while still a child. The best guess is that she was the youngest daughter of Hồ Phi Diễn. According to the first researchers of Hồ Xuân Hương, such as Nguyễn Hữu Tiến and Dương Quảng Hàm, she was a daughter of Hồ Phi Diễn (born in 1704) in Quỳnh Đôi Village, Quỳnh Lưu District, Nghệ An province. Hồ Phi Diễn acquired the baccalaureate diploma at the age of 24, under Lê Dụ Tông's reign. Due to his family's poverty, he had to work as a tutor in Hải Hưng, Hà Bắc for his earnings. At that place, he cohabitated with a girl from Bắc Ninh, his concubine – Hồ Xuân Hương was born as a result of that love affair. Nevertheless, in a paper in Literature Magazine (No. 10, Hanoi 1964), Trần Thanh Mại claims that Hồ Xuân Hương's hometown was the same as mentioned above, but she was a daughter of Hồ Sĩ Danh (1706–1783) and a younger stepsister of Hồ Sĩ Đống (1738–1786). She became locally famous and obtained a reputation of creating poems that were subtle and witty. She is believed to have married twice as her poems refer to two different husbands: Vĩnh Tường (a local official) and Tổng Cóc (a slightly higher level official). She was the second-rank wife of Tổng Cóc, in Western terms, a concubine, a role that she was clearly not happy with ("like the maid/but without the pay"). However, her second marriage did not last long as Tổng Cóc died just six months after the wedding. She lived the remainder of her life in a small house near West Lake in Hanoi. She had visitors, often fellow poets, including two specifically named men: Scholar Tôn Phong Thi and a man only identified as "The Imperial Tutor of the Nguyễn Family." She was able to make a living as a teacher and evidently was able to travel since she composed poems about several places in Northern Vietnam. A single woman in a Confucian society, her works show her to be independent-minded and resistant to societal norms, especially through her socio-political commentaries and her use of frank sexual humor and expressions. Her poems are usually irreverent, full of double entendres, and erudite.
Notable works
Notable works
These are some notable works of Hồ Xuân Hương with literal translations:

Quả Mít
Lachy70
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1772
Hồ Xuân Hương was born on 1 January 1772.
1822
Hồ Xuân Hương died on 1 January 1822.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Vietnam.
Birth place
Hanoi.
Death place
Legacy
By composing the vast majority of her works in chữ Nôm, she helped to elevate the status of Vietnamese as a literary language. Recently, however, some poems have been found which she composed in literary Chinese, indicating that she was not a purist. In modern times, chữ Nôm is nearly a dead script, having been supplanted by chữ Quốc ngữ, a Latin alphabet introduced during the period of French colonization. Some of her poems were collected and translated into English in John Balaban's Spring Essence (Copper Canyon Press, 2000, ISBN 1 55659 148 9). Another important Vietnamese poet and her contemporary is Nguyễn Du, who similarly wrote poetry in demotic Vietnamese, and so helped to found a national literature. A few cities in Vietnam have streets named after Hồ Xuân Hương.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Võ, Hà. Hồ Xuân Hương “Bà Chúa thơ Nôm”. vovworld.vn. VOV.
- 2.'The Poetess of White Silk Lake' in: Forbes, Andrew, and Henley, David: Vietnam Past and Present: The North (History and culture of Hanoi and Tonkin). Chiang Mai. Cognoscenti Books, 2012. ASIN: B006DCCM9Q.
- 3.Periplus Travel Maps. Vietnam Country Map. 2002–2003. 0-7946-0070-0.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 3
- Forbes, Andrew, and Henley, David: Vietnam Past and Present: The North (History and culture of Hanoi and Tonkin). Chiang Mai. Cognoscenti Books, 2012.
- Outstanding Vietnamese Women Before the 20th Century published in English by The Gioi Publishers, 2006.
- Hồ Xuân Hương, nha tho cach mang (Hồ Xuân Hương - A Revolutionary Poet) by Hoa Bang, 1982.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
A further 1 witness is held back from this article because the person or object named in it is not yet resolved to this record. They are kept, not discarded, and return once the identity is established.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
38,661 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Hizgil AvshalumovAuthor
- Hjalmar GullbergAuthor
- Hŏ NansŏrhŏnAuthor
- Hồ Quý LyAuthor
- Hoa NguyenAuthor
- Hoàng CầmAuthor
- Hoca Sadeddin EfendiAuthor
- Hoca TahsinAuthor
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Hồ Xuân Hương?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.