While her father was a Confucian and conservative official who subscribed tightly to the belief of namjon-yubi ("men above, women below"), it fell to her elder brother, Heo Bong, to recognize her budding talent and curiosity and introduce her to literature.
Her early piece, "Inscriptions on the Ridge Pole of the White Jade Pavilion in the Kwanghan Palace" (Kwanghanjeon Paegongnu sangnangmun), produced at the age of eight, was lauded as a work of poetic genius and earned her the epithet "immortal maiden.
Yi Tal, his tutor, also engaged in sharing Tang poetry with Nanseolheon, whose influence became visible in the naturalism of a significant portion of her surviving work.
Within a year of her elder brother Heo Bong's death in Kapsan, she died of illness at the age of twenty-seven in 1589.
Scholars such as Kim-Renaud[2] and Choe-Wall[1] engage with her literature and hypothesize that she lived among her brothers for a significant portion of her life (during which they suggest most of her Tang-influenced and naturalistic poetry was produced), and married later.
She suggests that the body of her "empathetic" poetry was produced after being married, as a result of the isolation from those who supported her literary talents and extended poetic circles.
This conjecture is based on the observation that a significant portion of what is believed to be her later literature laments the plight and sufferings of married women, and her early literature follows closely in the Tang tradition, employing heavy elements of folklore and natural imagery rather than the heavier emotive language found in her later writing.
This is only a supposition, however, as her Tang influenced poems could just as easily be read as tropes of the tradition utilized to veil her true feelings about women's unjust treatment.
During the lifetime of Nanseolheon, new forms of poetry that incorporated tonal irregularities, lines with non-standard syllable counts, and length (broadly referred to as kunch'e shi, of which yulshi and cheolgu are subsets) began to come into favor.
Nanseolheon's works are noted primarily for their broad range of subject matter, which is attributed in part to the drastic emotional shift evoked by her marriage.
These claims have in part discredited by recent scholarship by O Haein (Nansorhon shijip) and Kang Cheongseop (Moktongga ui pogwon e taehayo).
A beautiful woman's hands grabs a gold lacquered coin; Lighting the lamp's wick, during the long night, she sews a gentleman's attire.
豈是乏容色 工鍼復工織 少小長寒門 良媒不相識 夜久織未休 戛戛鳴寒機 機中一匹練 終作阿誰衣 手把金翦刀 夜寒十指直 爲人作嫁衣 年年還獨宿 "The Young Seamstress"
Embroidered sash and silk skirt are wet with tears, Every year fragrant plants lament a princely friend.
On my lute I play to its end the South River Song; Showers of pear blossom patter on the door, shut all day.