Writers › Writer / Poet
Zeng Gong
Northern Song prose writer from Nanfeng who collated books in the imperial library, governed a string of prefectures and ended his career drafting edicts in the secretariat
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Zi Zigu · Nanfeng Xiansheng · Wen Ding
Zeng Gong, courtesy name Zigu, of Nanfeng in Jianchang, was known for his prose before he was twenty, and Ouyang Xiu took him up after reading his essays. After passing the metropolitan examination in 1057 he collated books in the Historiography Institute and the imperial libraries. In the provinces he abolished an irregular levy in Yuezhou, broke a local strongman and set up mutual-watch groups against bandits in Qizhou, and went on to govern Xiang, Hong, Fu, Ming, Bo and Cang. Emperor Shenzong later kept him at court to merge two official dynastic histories, a task left unfinished; under the new bureaucratic system he became a drafting official in the Secretariat, and he died in 1083 aged sixty-five. He had introduced the young Wang Anshi to Ouyang Xiu, yet told Shenzong that Wang was bold in action but slow to admit mistakes. His works were collected as Yuanfeng leigao, and Mao Kun's Ming anthology of eight Tang and Song prose masters counted him among the eight.
Life and times
Dates 1019 CE–1083 CE