班昭
The work was composed by Ban Gu (32–92 CE), an Eastern Han court official, with the help of his sister Ban Zhao, continuing the work of their father, Ban Biao. They modeled their work on the "Records of the Grand Historian", a universal history, but theirs was the first in this annals-biography form to cover a single dynasty. It is the best source, sometimes the only one, for many topics in this period. A second work, the "Book of the Later Han" covers the Eastern Han period from 25 to 220, and was composed in the fifth century by Fan Ye (398–445).