Murasaki Shikibu

A Japanese noblewoman and lady-in-waiting at the Heian-era imperial court, author of The Tale of Genji, widely regarded as an early and fully realized example of the novel as a form, composed centuries before the eighteenth-century European works older literary histories once credited with originating it. 'Murasaki Shikibu' is itself a court sobriquet rather than her birth name, which is not recorded; Murasaki after a character in her own novel and Shikibu from a relative's court office, following a naming convention common for Heian court women, whose personal names were often not preserved in the historical record at all.