A biographical history compiled by the Ming History Office during the Qing dynasty. It bears the name of Zhang Tingyu as its author and consists of 332 volumes. Work began in the second year of the Shunzhi reign (1645), and a second attempt was made in the fourth year of the Kangxi reign (1665), but no progress was made. The project was restarted in the eighteenth year of the Kangxi reign (1679), with Xu Wenyuan as supervisor and Zhang Yushu, Wang Hongxu, Zhang Tingyu, and Wan Sitong among the compilers. Wan Sitong took part as a commoner and contributed the most. After twenty years, the 460-volume Draft History of the Ming was completed in the thirty-eighth year of the Kangxi reign (1699). Wang Hongxu later abridged it to 310 volumes, and the text was finalized in the fifty-third year of the Kangxi reign (1714). In the first year of the Yongzheng reign (1723), the Wang version was further revised under the chief editorship of Zhang Tingyu. The final version was completed in the thirteenth year of the Yongzheng reign (1735) and published in the fourth year of the Qianlong reign (1739). The work underwent four revisions over a full 90 years, making it the official dynastic history that took the longest to compile. It covers events from the first year of the Hongwu reign of the Ming founder (1368) through the seventeenth year of the Chongzhen reign of the Ming emperor Sizong (1644), a span of 276 years. Its sources include the Veritable Records of the Ming, archives, collected works, memorials, local gazetteers, court bulletins, private histories, and more. Its sources are reliable and broad, its compilation meticulous, its textual research relatively rigorous, and its writing concise. It is a valuable reference and a foundational source for the study of Ming history. The sections on native chieftains, foreign lands, and the Western Regions are especially precious. Its greatest flaw is that it omits historical events unfavorable to Qing rule. It is available in the original Wuying Hall block-print edition and in a punctuated and collated edition published by Zhonghua Book Company in 1974.
Very well written