Liang Shih-chiu

Liang Shih-chiu 梁實秋
Liang Shih-chiu with his first wife, Cheng Ji Shu (程季淑)
Born	(1903-01-06)January 6, 1903 Beijing, China
Died	November 3, 1987(1987-11-03) (aged 84) Taipei, Taiwan
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Chinese
Children	Liang Wenqian, Liang Wenqi, Liang Wenqiang

Liang Shih-chiu (January 6, 1903 – November 3, 1987), also romanized as Liang Shiqiu, and also known as Liang Chih-Hwa(梁治華), was a renowned educator, writer, translator, literary theorist and lexicographer.

Liang was born in Beijing in 1903. His father, Liang Xianxi (梁咸熙), was a Xiucai in the Qing Dynasty. He was educated at Tsinghua College in Beijing from 1915 to 1923. He went on to study at Colorado College and later pursued his graduate studies at Harvard and Columbia Universities. At Harvard, he studied literary criticism under Irving Babbitt, whose New Humanism helped shape his conservative literary tenets.

After his return to China in 1926, he began a long career as a professor of English at several universities, including Peking University, Tsingtao University, and Jinan University. He also served as the editor of a succession of literary supplements and periodicals, including the famous Crescent Moon Monthly (1928–1933). During this period he published a number of literary treatises which showed the strong influence of Babbitt and demonstrated his belief that human life and human nature are the only proper subjects for literature. The best known among these are The Romantic and the Classical, Literature and Revolution, The Seriousness of Literature, and The Permanence of Literature. In each of these treatises, he upheld the intrinsic value of literature as something that transcends social class and strongly opposed using literature for propagandist purposes. These pronouncements and his dislike for the excessive influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other Romanticists in China triggered a polemic war between him and Lu Xun and drew the concerted attacks of leftist writers. His major works as a translator included James Barrie's Peter Pan, George Eliot's Silas Marner and Mr. Gilfil's Love Story, and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.