The Dictionary of National Biography and Its Early Editors and Publisher

Abstract

The Dictionary of National Biography (or DNB as it is commonly called and as it will be referred to in this paper) is a classic. Depending on whether a library owns an original edition published by Smith, Elder and Company or a reprint edition published by Oxford University Press, sixty‐three brown volumes or twenty‐two blue volumes and supplements loom bulkily from the shelves. It would be an odd, ill‐trained reference librarian, historian, or scholar of English literature who has never heard of the DNB, let alone used and perused it. But mere bulk does not explain the lasting fame and staying power of this reference work, whose first volume appeared in January 1885 over a century ago.

Citation

Fritze, R.H. (1988), "The Dictionary of National Biography and Its Early Editors and Publisher", Reference Services Review, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 21-29. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb049033