Anecdotes, or yishi 軼事 (scattered affairs) and yiwen 遺聞 (uncollected stories) in their original Chinese context, are in a sense recovered traces of the past. That is to say, for many Tang literati, to collect anecdotes was to catch fading memories of a recent past, and to offer explanations of, or pass judgments on, this period of history. This thesis seeks to show how Tang literati like Li Deyu李德裕 (787-850) and his contemporaries, by collecting and publicizing anecdotes, actively participated in recording and reflecting on the Kaiyuan 開元 (713-741) and Tianbao 天寶 (742-756) reigns before these periods became part of the official historical record. Anecdote collections appeared in great numbers in China between the eighth and ninth centuries. But they received little scholarly attention until recently, partly due to their heterogeneous contents and marginalized status. Facing these challenges, the current thesis seeks to restore a set of anecdote collections of this period to the original context of their production and circulation. It reviews anecdotes collected by the influential Tang statesman and literatus Li Deyu and his contemporaries. These anecdotes, featuring Li Deyu as a collector, informant, and, at times, the subject himself, establish a solid basis for exploring this understudied genre that flourished in the Tang dynasty. Anecdotes collected by Li Deyu and his peers exemplify the richness, breadth, and complexity of this literary genre in the ninth century. They jointly preserved memories and records that would otherwise have sunk into obscurity. They also competed with each other in the reconstruction of the past. Methodologically, this thesis supports other recent studies that break the generic limitation imposed by early modern scholars on Tang narratives. Instead, it seeks to explicate anecdote as a fluid genre straddling the lines between oral and written traditions, personal account and collective memory, and literature and historiography.