Background piece

The Oxford DNB is a collection of 50,000 specially written biographies of men and women who have shaped all aspects of the British past, from the earliest times to the near past. The stories of these lives—told in substantial, authoritative, and readable articles—were published simultaneously in sixty print volumes and online in September 2004. Coverage in the print edition stretches from the earliest time to the end of the year 2000. Since initial publication four updates have been added to the online edition; in January, May, and October 2005 and most recently in January 2006. These updates have extended coverage to the end of 2002, as well as adding biographies of people from the earliest times to 2000, often paying particular attention to people who broadly share a common interest or identity such as women in politics, or exiles and political refugees in Britain.

The Oxford DNB project is a unique amalgam of academic and publishing activity. It is constituted as a research and publishing project of the University of Oxford, with research funding, until 2004, from the British Academy, and all other funding and resources from Oxford University Press. The dictionary is published by Oxford University Press, the publisher (since 1917) of the DNB and of the Oxford English Dictionary, and itself a department of the University of Oxford.

The DNB was completed in 1900 and rapidly became a national institution—an indispensable reference work for anyone interested in the histories and cultures of the British Isles. For the next ninety years supplements appeared at intervals, chronicling notable figures, but by the late twentieth century it had become clear that a massive programme of revision was needed to stop the DNB from becoming a historical curiosity. In 1992 work began on the Oxford DNB.

Replacing and extending the DNB, the Oxford DNB was probably the largest co-operative research project ever undertaken in the humanities. Over a twelve-year period a team of academic editors and publishers in Oxford co-ordinated the work of many thousands of specialists worldwide to recreate one of the great reference works in English for the twenty-first century.

Owing to its broad, accessible, and authoritative coverage, the Oxford DNB has proved to have a broad appeal: from scholarly researchers to university, college, and school students; from professional writers to general readers of biography; and from local and family historians to librarians, archivists, and curators.

For more information about the Oxford DNB please contact Anna Mayall or Lucy Chavasse
at Colman Getty PR on 020 7631 2666
or email lucy@colmangetty.co.uk.

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