Abstract: Written by Bernardin De Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie is a sensationally best-selling novel during the late 18th century in France. Many famous writers like Balzac, Flaubert, Merimee, Maupassant, Daudet spoke of the influence of this novel in their works. And also, some French literary historians, such as Gustave Lanson, once put a claim that Saint-Pierre had brought innovation to the entire French literature. Besides, Abel-François Villemain, “the father of comparative literature”, paid particular attention to Saint-Pierre as well. In 1914, the novel was translated into Chinese by Lin Shu and Wang Qingji, titled Lihentian, which started its process of spread and acceptance in China within a span of more than one hundred years. The novel, however, was unexpectedly given cold shoulders in China: with only a few translated versions, the author even had no opportunity to just appear in the text book of French literary history compiled by Chinese scholars. This is a typical case of literature variation under a cross-culture context. This paper attempts to explain this typical variation, by analyzing the literature acceptance phenomenon in the practical communication and empirical research on the cross-language variation of this novel.

Key words: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie, Lin Shu, Lihentian, literature variations