Chinese scholar and writer whose erudition and scholarly achievements were practically unrivaled in 20th-century China.

Qian attended missionary schools in Suzhou and Wuxi while receiving English and classical Chinese training under the tutelage of his father. A student of the Department of Western Languages and Literature, he graduated from Qinghua University in 1933. He taught at Guanghua University in Shanghai for two years before entering Exeter College, Oxford, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1937. He briefly studied French literature at the Sorbonne before returning to China in 1939 to teach. He taught at several colleges and universities and worked as chief compiler of the Foreign Languages Division of the National Library in Nanjing. He became a senior research fellow of the Institute of Literature of Peking University in 1953 and a member of the Academic Council of the Philosophy and Social Sciences Division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955.

Qian's prose includes Xie zai rensheng bianshang (1941; “Written on the Verge of Life”), a small volume of essays; Ren, shou, gui (1946; “Men, Beasts, and Ghosts”), a collection of short stories; and Weicheng (1947; Fortress Besieged), a novel. Although it was widely translated, Qian's novel did not receive much recognition in China until the late 1970s. It became a best-seller in China in the 1980s and was made into a television drama series in 1991.

Qian's scholarly works were greeted with critical acclaim as soon as they came off the press. Such was the case with the new edition of Tanyilu (1948; “Reflections in Appreciation”; revised and enlarged in 1983), Songshi xuanzhu (1958; “Selected and Annotated Poems of the Song Dynasty”), and the four-volume Guanzhuibian (1979; Limited Views, a partial translation). The latter work contains comparative studies in literature and culture in general, many of which involve several languages and a good number of authors and their creative or scholarly works, both ancient and modern. In 1986 a volume of revisions and addenda was included in volume 4 of the work. Qian's other writings include Jiuwen sipian (1979; “Four Early Articles”) and Qizhuiji (1984), a collection of scholarly pieces. He served as vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Science during 1982–93 and was retained as its senior adviser until his death.