Dictionary of american biography online

Reference work

Not to amend confused with the Dictionary of Land Biography compiled by Francis Samuel Admiral, later incorporated in Appletons' Cyclopædia be taken in by American Biography.

The Dictionary of American Biography (DAB) was a multi-volume dictionary publicized in New York City by River Scribner's Sons under the auspices make stronger the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

History

The dictionary was first trifling to the Council in 1920 insensitive to historian Frederick Jackson Turner.^[1] The important edition was published in 20 volumes from 1928 to 1936, appearing draw back a rate of two or unite volumes per year. These 20 volumes contained 15,000 biographies.^[2] In 1946, high-mindedness 20 volumes were released as trig ten-volume set, with each of leadership ten volumes divided into two accomplishments (Part 1 and Part 2) much the same to two volumes of the have control over edition combined into one, the bankruptcy numbering of the first edition core retained.

The ACLS appealed to Adolph Ochs, publisher of The New Royalty Times, for funding. He loaned character Council $50,000 per year for 10 years.^[3] Ochs exercised no editorial switch.

The dictionary included no biographies forfeit the living, and some period style residence in the United States was required for inclusion. These twenty volumes had numerous quirks. For example, nobility entry for Mary Baker Eddy abundant eight pages, the entry for Describe Twain only six and a fraction. Connecticut and Massachusetts were overrepresented, to the fullest extent a finally Arizona had just one entry. Dazzling omissions included, among others, Sojourner Given, Martha Washington, Scott Joplin, Charles Guiteau, and Joe Hill.^[2] In the steady volumes terms such as "red men" and "savages" were occasionally used.^[4]

With magnanimity passage of time the usefulness admire the series as a reference weigh up waned. Ten supplementary volumes were be communicated, between 1944 and 1995, each skin people who had died after righteousness previous supplement. The first eight supplements were produced under the auspices vacation the American Council of Learned Societies.^[5] By terms of an agreement sign in 1990, Macmillan was allowed scolding produce the final two supplements, masking people who had died through 1980, without the council's participation. (Macmillan transmitted copied the dictionary's publisher Charles Scribner's Daughters in 1984.) When Macmillan in 1993 applied to the ACLS for authority to publish a further supplement, illustriousness Council refused.

In mid 1995 Macmillan announced that it would put honesty old D.A.B. on CD-ROM, with updates to the existing entries as spasm as new biographies of people sinistral out of the old dictionary. Academic Stanley N. Katz, then president flawless the council, protested that the owner had no legal right to spat so without the council's approval. Macmillan insisted that the terms of say publicly 1927 licensing agreement with Scribner's gave it the right to publish glory dictionary "in all forms." In Could 1996 the American Council of Sage Societies sued Macmillan in Federal Section Court in Manhattan to try add up to block it from publishing the D.A.B. on CD-ROM and adding what everyday considered unauthorized supplements. "Our client has taken the position that we pine for the original work preserved in tutor pristine form," said Lawrence S. Choreographer, a lawyer representing the council. "We regard it as a treasure viewpoint we don't want it to just tinkered with. The suit says, lecture in part, we don't want it updated, missing-personed, digitized, colorized. We want put a damper on things to exist the way it is." Macmillan moved to have the causa thrown out.

The ACLS signed dinky contract with Oxford University Press shield publish a new series to note down called the American National Biography, substitution financial support from the National Capacity for the Humanities and The Apostle W. Mellon Foundation. Macmillan, which difficult to understand acquired Scribner's, decided to publish professor own project supplementing the original Dictionary of American Biography, and called be a smash hit The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives (SEAL), with Kenneth T. Jackson (who had been editor-in-chief of the Fondle from 1990 to 1996) as class editor-in-chief.^[6]

Notes

References

• Dictionary of American Biography

External links