Call for authors, 1882

23 December 2007 marked the 125th anniversary of the announcement to publish the original Dictionary of National Biography, then entitled the 'Biographica Britannica'.

The idea for a national biography had been conceived in the early 1880s by the publisher and businessman, George Murray Smith, who chose as his editor, the historian Leslie Stephen, who was then editor of Smith's Cornhill Magazine.

The announcement of a new biographical dictionary was made by Leslie Stephen in the Athenaeum magazine on 23 December 1882. Here Stephen asked for help 'from all who are able and willing to give it' and announced that 'the editor of such a work must, by the necessity of the case, be autocratic. He will do his best to be a considerate autocrat'.

To read Stephen's Athenaeum announcement in full, click here (pdf).

The first volume of the Dictionary of National Biography (which was published in alphabetical sequence) appeared in late 1884 (though the title page bears the date 1885). Leslie Stephen remained as editor of the DNB until 1890 when he was joined by his former assistant, Sidney Lee, who became sole editor a year later.

From 1885 four volumes of the DNB were published each year, with the last volume (Wordsworth to Zuylestein) appearing in 1900. In this period more than 650 authors contributed entries to the DNB.

Among the first to respond to Stephen's Athenaeum notice were the historians Alice Cooke and E.A. Freeman and Stephen's wife Julia, who each contributed to volume one. While Freeman did no more after writing 'Alfred', another contributor to volume one, the writer on astronomy, Agnes Mary Clerke went on to provide entries for 150 people throughout the DNB's alphabetical sequence.

If you would like to read more about the history of the Dictionary of National Biography, you may be interested in a lecture, 'Leslie Stephen and the New DNB' (1995), given by the late Colin Matthew, founding editor of the Oxford DNB.

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