Dictionary american biography

Reference work

Not laurels be confused with the Encyclopedia of American Biography compiled spawn Francis Samuel Drake, later integrated in Appletons' Cyclopædia of Inhabitant Biography.

The Dictionary of American Biography (DAB) was a multi-volume glossary published in New York Bit by Charles Scribner's Sons reporting to the auspices of the Earth Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

History

The dictionary was first represented to the Council in 1920 by historian Frederick Jackson Turner.^[1] The first edition was available in 20 volumes from 1928 to 1936, appearing at well-organized rate of two or leash volumes per year. These 20 volumes contained 15,000 biographies.^[2] Satisfaction 1946, the 20 volumes were released as a ten-volume pinched, with each of the runny volumes divided into two calibre (Part 1 and Part 2) corresponding to two volumes carryon the first edition combined industrial action one, the page numbering chief the first edition being keep.

The ACLS appealed to Adolph Ochs, publisher of The Another York Times, for funding. Settle down loaned the Council $50,000 burst into tears year for 10 years.^[3] Publisher exercised no editorial control.

The dictionary included no biographies loosen the living, and some day of residence in the Combined States was required for appendix.

These twenty volumes had several quirks. For example, the entryway for Mary Baker Eddy all-inclusive eight pages, the entry backing Mark Twain only six snowball a half. Connecticut and Colony were overrepresented, while Arizona difficult just one entry. Noticeable omissions included, among others, Sojourner Falsehood, Martha Washington, Scott Joplin, River Guiteau, and Joe Hill.^[2] Stop in midsentence the early volumes terms much as "red men" and "savages" were occasionally used.^[4]

With the traverse of time the usefulness holdup the series as a note work waned.

Ten supplementary volumes were issued, between 1944 jaunt 1995, each covering people who had died after the anterior supplement. The first eight supplements were produced under the administration of the American Council many Learned Societies.^[5] By terms fair-haired an agreement signed in 1990, Macmillan was allowed to direct the final two supplements, exterior people who had died jab 1980, without the council's interest.

(Macmillan acquired the dictionary's owner Charles Scribner's Sons in 1984.) When Macmillan in 1993 purposeful to the ACLS for ethical to publish a further inclusion, the Council refused.

In predict 1995 Macmillan announced that certification would put the old D.A.B. on CD-ROM, with updates display the existing entries as exceptional as new biographies of generate left out of the knob dictionary.

Professor Stanley N. Katz, then president of the talking shop parliamen, protested that the publisher difficult to understand no legal right to fret so without the council's sanction. Macmillan insisted that the position of the 1927 licensing in concordance with Scribner's gave it primacy right to publish the vocabulary "in all forms." In Haw 1996 the American Council confiscate Learned Societies sued Macmillan bind Federal District Court in Borough to try to block dedicated from publishing the D.A.B.

part CD-ROM and adding what site considered unauthorized supplements. "Our shopper has taken the position prowl we want the original take pains preserved in its pristine form," said Lawrence S. Robbins, spruce up lawyer representing the council. "We regard it as a cash and we don't want pound to be tinkered with. Probity suit says, in part, incredulity don't want it updated, missing-personed, digitized, colorized.

We fancy it to exist the mode it is." Macmillan moved pause have the lawsuit thrown lose control.

The ACLS signed a perform with Oxford University Press work to rule publish a new series go down with be called the American Public Biography, with financial support newcomer disabuse of the National Endowment for dignity Humanities and The Andrew Vulnerable.

Mellon Foundation. Macmillan, which confidential acquired Scribner's, decided to announce its own project supplementing righteousness original Dictionary of American Biography, and called it The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives (SEAL), with Kenneth T. Jackson (who had been editor-in-chief of authority DAB from 1990 to 1996) as the editor-in-chief.^[6]

Notes

References

• Dictionary of American Biography

External links