Professor Wen-Yue Lin, with her ancestral home in Changhua, Taiwan, was born in Shanghai in 1933. After graduating from the Department of Chinese Literature and its graduate institute of National Taiwan University with stellar academic records, she remained at the school as member of the faculty. From lecturer and associate professor to professor, she retired in the summer of 1993 and received the title of Emeritus Professor of the Department of Chinese Literature, National Taiwan University. After retirement, she accepted invitations to lecture at the University of Washington in Seattle, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley in the USA and Charles University in the Czech Republic. Her important academic publications include Landscape and Classics (Shanshui yu Gudian) and Collection of Middle-age Literature (Zhonggu Wenxue Luncong), both of which are widely popular.

　　From 1960 to 1966, working for the Eastern Publishing Co., Ltd., Professor Lin translated and edited three biographies including Joan of Arc, and rewrote three Western classics such as The Lady of the Camellias as children's literature. In 1969, she was granted funding from the National Science Council to research Chinese and Japanese comparative literature at the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University. In her spare time, she completed the prose collection One Year in Kyoto, thereby establishing her status as a revered contemporary prose writer. Her prose collection Faraway (Yaoyuan) received the first prize in prose in the fifth Zhongxing Culture and Arts Award; Study in the Afternoon (Wuhou Shufang) received a Recommendation Prize in the ninth China Times Literary Awards; Conversation (Jiaotan) won the fourteenth National Award for Arts in prose. Notes on Delicacies (Yinshan Zhaji) was awarded the third Taipei Literature Award.

　　From her work on the influences of Bai Juyi on the literature of the Heian period, while working on her thesis The Tale of Genji and the Song of Enduring Woe, she began to translate Genji Monogatari; for this accomplishment she received the Accomplishment in Translation Award of the Nineteenth National Awards for Arts. She later continued to translate other Japanese classical literature masterpieces such as The Pillow Book, the Izumi Shikibu Diary, and The Tales of Ise. Her numerous accomplishments in translating Japanese literary classics have led the Tō-A Dobun Shoin to honor her with the Memorial Prize. In 2012, for her various contributions, she was awarded the National Cultural Award by the Executive Yuan.