Hibernate version:
3.1

Name and version of the database you are using:
MySQL -- Innodb



I've been trying to create a somewhat compicated class but so far I am unsuccessful.

For simplicity, I will describe it thus:

Class A has a bunch of property items and a list which references class B. Class B has a bunch of property items and subclasses. Some of the subclasses have a list of B referenced (thus self referencial or recursive). With some twiddling I was able to get hibernate to not complain but at run time it stopped indicating that a foreign key condition had failed. I interpreted this as meaning that the list in the subclasses was being created before the list item in B.

My questionis whether this is possible at all. If not, what solutions may exist.

It is possible. You just have to be careful with your mappings. The most common pitfall is to omit the not-null="true" atttribute of the <key> element in the collection definition, but there are other potential traps. Post specific problems that you're having.