Among the works produced by Murasaki Shikibu, a Japanese writer of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, The Tale of Genji holds the most prominent place. Composed in Japanese, it is a novel — the form with which her name is most directly associated — and it stands alongside her diary and her verse as evidence of a writer working across multiple literary modes.

Born in Heian-kyō around 973, Murasaki Shikibu was a citizen of Japan who wrote in the Japanese language. Her roles were several: she served as a lady-in-waiting, and she worked as a novelist, a poet, a diarist, and a philosopher. That range of occupation is reflected in the three works attributed to her — The Tale of Genji, The Diary of Lady Murasaki, and Poetic Memoirs — each representing a distinct form of literary practice. Her position as a lady-in-waiting situated her within a specific social and professional context, one she sustained alongside her writing life.

The Tale of Genji is her most noted work, and it is joined by The Diary of Lady Murasaki, which places her among writers who turned to personal record as a literary form, and by Poetic Memoirs, which preserves her work as a poet. Together these three titles define the scope of what she produced, spanning narrative fiction, diary writing, and verse. Her identity as a philosopher, alongside her roles as novelist and poet, suggests a writer whose engagement with her material extended beyond purely formal concerns.

She died in Heian-kyō, with recorded dates placing her death somewhere between 1014 and 1016. Her works are catalogued in open literary archives, and Murasaki Shikibu herself is registered in the Open Library under the identifier OL365212A — a record that marks her continued presence in the systems through which readers and researchers access literary history.