Shi Nai'an

Shi Nai'an lived at the end of the Yuan and the beginning of the Ming; tradition gives his birth as 1296, his family as from Suzhou, and his later home as Baiju in Xinghua, Jiangsu. He is said to have passed the highest examination and served two years as an official in Qiantang before resigning in disgust at the corruption of office and returning home to write; others say he served on the staff of the rebel leader Zhang Shicheng. Very few records of his life survive, and much of what is told is later report and legend. He is generally held to have written The Water Margin on the basis of the tales and plays about the rising of Song Jiang and his thirty-six companions that had circulated since the Song and Yuan.