Li Yanshou

Li Yanshou was a Tang-dynasty historian, courtesy name Xialing, a native of Xiangzhou (present-day Anyang, Henan) whose ancestral home was Longxi; his birth and death years are unknown, and available public information is limited. Carrying on the unfinished work of his father Li Dashi, he independently compiled the eighty-volume History of the Southern Dynasties (Nan Shi) and the one-hundred-volume History of the Northern Dynasties (Bei Shi), both included among the Twenty-Four Histories and important sources for the history of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. He also took part in the official compilation of the Book of Sui, the Monographs of the Five Dynasties, the Book of Jin, and the state history of his own time. His writing, in annal-biographical form, spans the successive northern and southern courts, trimming redundancy and keeping events coherent, and shows a broad historical vision that offers later readers a relatively complete account of politics, people, and society in that era, with a lasting influence on Chinese historiography.