Oxford dictionary of national biography volumes definition
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Library resource spotlight: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Introducing our latest resource - the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (also known as Oxford DNB)!
Oxford DNB is a national record of the people who have shaped British history and culture, worldwide, from the Romans to the 21st century. Work on the first Oxford DNB began in 1882 by its founding editor, Leslie Stephen (better known as the father of Virginia Woolf), with the first volume published in 1900, which included entries on more than 30,000 people active in the British past. The dictionary, which has been continuously extended and developed with regular online updates since 2004, now contains the biographies of 60,000 plus people spanning 72 million words and a period of 2,500 years of history!
The dictionary includes concise and up-to-date biographies written by specialist authors. As well as individual articles, Oxford DNB also offers group theme articles which act as a reference companion to British history, as well as a free bi-monthly podcast. There’s also interactive maps and picture galleries for a more colourful means of exploring the records, as well as a daily email service or RSS feed to receive a topical life of the day every morning!
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Making histories: interpretation Oxford Wordbook of Own Biography
Lawrence Goldman
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Dictionary of National Biography
Reference on notable British figures
The Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) was published on 23 September 2004 in 60 volumes and online, with 50,113 biographical articles covering 54,922 lives.
First series
[edit]Hoping to emulate national biographical collections published elsewhere in Europe, such as the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (1875), in 1882 the publisher George Smith (1824–1901), of Smith, Elder & Co., planned a universal dictionary that would include biographical entries on individuals from world history. He approached Leslie Stephen, then editor of the Cornhill Magazine, owned by Smith, to become the editor. Stephen persuaded Smith that the work should focus only on subjects from the United Kingdom and its present and former colonies. An early working title was the Biographia Britannica, the name of an earlier eighteenth-century reference work.
The first volume of the Dictionary of National Biography appeared on 1 January 1885. In May 1891 Leslie Stephen resigned and Sidney Lee, Stephen's assistant editor from the beginning of the proj