Who wrote Historical Records and The Book of the Former Han Dynasty？
2 min readSima Qian（145year）wrote Historial Records.He began to write it at the age of 42，completing it 11 years later.The records cover a period of 3，000 years，from the legendary age of the Yellow Emperor to the Han Emperor.It is the first comprehensive history in the form of biographical records in China.These records consist mainly of three sections，which contain more than half a million words.In the first section，an account of each emperor’s reign is given.In the second section，Sima Qian wrote essays on music，calendar，astrology，rivers，canals，economics，and other topics.The third section presents biographies of many major and minor historical figures.The literary quality of this history has always been regarded as extremely high，and as a model of biographical literature，the records have had a strong influence on the literary development of later prose writing，including fiction and drama.
Who wrote The Book of the Former Han Dynasty？
The Ban family wrote this book.Ban Biao began writing the book，and his son Ban Gu constituted it，writing the bulk of the book.Ban Zhao，Ban Gu’s younger sister added a few chapters after Ban Gu’s death.
This book records the historical period from the first year of Gaozu，the first emperor of the Han Dynasty until the fourth year of Dihuang of the Xin Dynasty. It covers a total of 229 years.As the book deals with the Former Han，it mainly borrows materials from Historial Records.Although Ban Gu’s historical approach is not as enlightened as that of Sima Qian，he is also regarded as a great historian.He stressed objective historical facts，and the bookhas become the model for each dynasty’s historians in composing official accounts of the events of the previous dynasty in ancient China.
