"玉台新詠" by Xu Ling is an anthology compiled around the early to mid-530s during the Southern dynasties period. This collection contains 670 poems by over 115 poets, including 14 women, focused on romantic and semi-erotic "palace style" verse. The anthology explores themes of love, beauty, and gender roles through poems about desire and relationships. Likely compiled as reading material for palace ladies, it ranges from anonymous Han Dynasty ballads to contemporary works, celebrating feminine beauty while also including matter-of-fact homoerotic verses.