Dictionary of National Biography

Dictionary of National Biography

by Sidney Lee (Editor), George Murray Smith

The Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) is widely recognized as a major historical and literary achievement. Since publication of the original volumes between 1885 and 1900, supplements have been issued bringing the current total to thirty-two printed volumes. The availability of the DNB on CD-ROM creates a whole new range of possibilities for exploring the content of this massive publication. Documented in this impressive reference work are the lives of nearly 40,000 people. Now, not only does computerization allow for instant access to this wealth biographical information, it also facilitates wide-ranging searches which are impossible to perform using the printed volumes. Searches can now be constructed which range from general to specificfrom queries relating a group of people with similar descriptions to obscure references concerning little known individuals.

While the DNB's authoritative content is of great scholarly interest to professionals including biographers, historians, journalists, genealogists and archivists; its entries, which combine fact, anecdote and personal memoir in readable and entertaining form, possess a charm which has always made the DNB appealing to general readers. All of these features combine to make the CD-ROM edition of the DNB an essential reference and research tool which no library should be without.

CD-ROM Advantages:

* Instantly locate biographies of individuals by name.

* Quickly locate articles of interest by browsing any of the available indexes including: title, occupation, location and date.

* Search for words across the full text of the DNB--all 32 volumes in seconds.

* Create precise searches using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and employing filters such as gender and case sensitivity.

* Sort results of searches to allow for efficient browsing.

* Save or print the results of searches.

* Bookmark items of interest.

* Change font styles and sizes for greater readability on screen.

650 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Sir Sidney Lee (5 December 1859 – 3 March 1926) was an English biographer and critic. He was born Solomon Lazarus Lee at 12 Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, London and educated at the City of London School and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in modern history in 1882. In the next year he became assistant-editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. In 1890 he became joint editor, and on the retirement of Sir Leslie Stephen in 1891 succeeded him as editor.
Lee himself contributed voluminously to the Dictionary, writing some 800 articles, mainly on Elizabethan authors or statesmen. His sister Elizabeth Lee also contributed. While still at Balliol he had written two articles on Shakespearean questions, which were printed in The Gentleman's Magazine, and in 1884 he published a book about Stratford-on-Avon. His article on Shakespeare in the fifty-first volume (1897) of the Dictionary of National Biography formed the basis of his Life of William Shakespeare (1898), which reached its fifth edition in 1905.
In 1902, Lee edited the Oxford facsimile edition of the first folio of Shakespeare's comedies, histories and tragedies, followed in 1902 and 1904 by supplementary volumes giving details of extant copies, and in 1906 by a complete edition of Shakespeare's works.
Lee received a knighthood in 1911. Between 1913-24 he was Professor of English Literature and Language at East London College, what is now Queen Mary, University of London.
Besides editions of English classics his works include a Life of Queen Victoria (1902), Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth century (1904), based on his Lowell Institute lectures at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1903, Shakespeare and the Modern Stage (1906), and King Edward VII, a Biography (1925). There are personal letters from Lee, including during his last illness, in the T.F. Tout Collection, John Rylands Library, Manchester.