Launched in 1992 as the New Dictionary of National Biography, the dictionary is constituted as a research and publishing project of the University of Oxford, with research funding from the British Academy, and all other funding and resources from Oxford University Press. While its administrative and production staff are employees of the Press, its research staff are employees of the University and members of the Faculty of History. Its founder Editor, Colin Matthew (d. 1999), was a professor in the Faculty and his successor, Brian Harrison, came to the Faculty as a professor from Politics and International Relations; its research editors are all practising historians.
Replacing and extending the original Victorian Dictionary of National Biography, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (as it has now become) is probably the largest co-operative research project ever undertaken in the humanities. The team of editors and publishers in Oxford have been co-ordinating the work of about ten thousand contributors from around the world. The 36,500 entries in the old dictionary and its twentieth century supplements have been rewritten or revised; covering recent deaths, redressing excessively metropolitan or anglocentric emphases, and reflecting the development of areas of historical study like business, medicine, science, crime, and the lives of women, 13,500 completely new subjects from all chronological periods now also have articles. In the spirit of its original Editors, Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, the scope of the dictionary is broadly defined, with entries devoted not only to British people active in Britain and Ireland, but also to British people notable anywhere in the world, to foreigners who visited or settled in the British Isles, recording its society or otherwise making a significant impact upon it, and to people celebrated in the history of British colonies, its protectorates and overseas territories during the periods that they had this status. Oxford DNB will be published in 50 volumes and online in September 2004, and in a departure from its predecessors, will include 10,000 illustrations.
Both versions of the dictionary will constitute a major research resource with worldwide application. Precise details of subjects' lives, families, education, geographical location, and religious affiliation are integrated with analysis of their significance in their own time and of their enduring reputation; in contrast with the old dictionary, published works are discussed rather than simply listed. Will and probate information, much of it gathered by in-house researchers, is cited for the first time in many articles. Bibliographical precision in the listing of sources, and references to relevant archives extend the usefulness of the text. Sophisticated searching tools will render the electronic version in particular an almost unparalleled source for investigating networks of kinship and friendship, geographical congruence, and political, religious, artistic and literary interrelationship.
Oxford DNB is an ongoing project. A continuing team of research editors - Drs Philip Carter, Mark Curthoys, Matthew Kilburn, Vivienne Larminie, Alex May and Henry Summerson - are working under Professor Harrison (retiring in September 2004) and his successor-designate, Dr Lawrence Goldman, to prepare new material for release online from January 2005. It is anticipated that publication will encourage submission of amendments and further information on existing subjects; coverage will also be developed and extended, and further tools introduced to increase ease of access and breadth of application. The established seminar series will continue in a new guise, and act as a platform for the discussion of biographical themes and methodologies. The dictionary has already spawned a spin-off research project, 'The DNB, the National Portrait Gallery and the presentation of national history, 1856-1909' , being undertaken by former research editor and current Faculty member Dr Annette Peach. It is envisaged that this will be the first of many such initiatives.
