 |
 |
|
|
||
| Subscriber home page |
| |
|
||
Principles of inclusion; The shape of the articlesPrinciples of inclusionAt an early stage in the planning, Matthew decided to retain in the new dictionary everyone in the DNB and its supplements. 'My approach to the DNB has been throughout conservative', he wrote in his internal report of April 1993, 'both as to the distribution of subjects and the content of individual articles'; the new dictionary was 'thus a development from the present DNB, not a de novo replacement of it'. He felt that the DNB was too valuable to set aside completely: the task for the makers of the new was not to start again, but rather to retain the DNB's range and character while updating and extending it. All the DNB's articles were to be rewritten or revised in the light of social and intellectual change since Stephen's day. (12) This decision immediately built into the new dictionary much of the pragmatism of the old. All the plans for the Oxford DNB envisaged including many articles on lives absent from the DNB. Initial OUP estimates, informed by surveys of the DNB and by the experience of compiling Missing Persons, indicated the need to expand the number of articles by about a fifth; the 7500 new articles originally projected produced a total of some 45,000. Matthew's initial canvassing of specialists in 1992 subsequently identified more clearly the areas that needed strengthening. Allowance also had to be made for the people who died between 1991 and 2000. So Matthew adopted a target of 50,000 articles for the new dictionary, an increase of about 13,500 articles (37 per cent) over the total number of articles in the DNB.His aim was to recapture the DNB's late-Victorian breadth of selection in terms of numbers, fields of activity, and formal nationality. Matthew wrote of a 'return to the integrationalist approach of the original edition, in which many minor figures were included, often in half a column ... We seek today to reflect in our extra entries the incorporation of areas of historical interest and significance which have developed since the 1880s.' The 'use of the DNB as a sort of establishment roll-call of national pre-eminence', he added, 'is recent and in my view undesirable'. (13) As he wrote later, the new dictionary 'is not merely a roll-call of the great and the good, but also a gallimaufry of the eccentric and the bad'. (14) Matthew also decided that the Oxford DNB should include a small number of articles about families and groups. This was an experimental feature, building again on the precedent of the DNB, which had treated a few medieval families in this way. These articles would reflect new attitudes to biography, much of whose interest, he wrote, 'springs from the tension between individual characteristics and development and the family, social and class background to which such characteristics relate. Biographical research increasingly takes the form of books about groups of people.' (15) With the Oxford DNB's overall scope decided, detailed implementation required important subordinate decisions. It was decided to continue the DNB's policy of including no living person, and to choose 31 December 2000 as the terminal date—a century after the original DNB's coverage had ended. More difficult was nationality. Matthew felt that Stephen's title for the DNB was 'brilliant' because it did not require him to define nationality; like the queen's head on postage stamps, 'the DNB asserted nationality but carefully avoided defining it'. (16) This allowed a policy on inclusion that would be, like Stephen's, pragmatic and flexible. (17) Neither the DNB's first article (on Jacques Abbadie, 1654?–1727) nor its penultimate article (on William Zuylestein, 1645–1709) centred upon a person born in Britain; both had settled there. Such an integrative policy on inclusion fitted well with the libertarian, free-trading, and internationalist outlook prevalent among late-Victorian Liberals, and was perhaps inevitable in a work whose articles included many people who lived in the British Isles long before any recognizable state existed there. The chronological span of the DNB and its supplements encompassed periods of Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Danish, Norman, and Angevin dominion; separate kingdoms within what became England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales; and the subsequent dramatic expansion and contraction in British rule overseas. In preparing the Oxford DNB, Matthew proposed in his report of April 1993 to adopt a working definition of nationality, often implicit but unstated in the DNB, which treated the inhabitants of the British Isles as a 'nation-in-effect'. At the same time he emphasized the inherent pluralism of its constituent nationalities, and aimed to enhance the Dictionary's coverage of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands by including people from the regions of the British Isles and British territories overseas. The DNB had included people who lived in overseas territories under British rule, and who might never have set foot in the British Isles. By occasionally including people such as Commonwealth prime ministers, the DNB supplements had continued this earlier practice, though on a more limited scale. As with all the people in the DNB, Matthew included them in the new dictionary, and in assessing the claims of further such entrants he was influenced by how far they had interacted with British concerns—by whether they were 'known to Whitehall'. This meant that people in overseas territories were not included if they were notable only within those areas or cultures. On the other hand, people who played some significant part in the territory's relations with British imperial power—whether as clients and government servants, or as opponents of that power—could still be considered for inclusion, as could those whose significance extended into British cultural and intellectual life. More articles on Éire since 1922 were warranted, both on the 'known-to-Whitehall' principle (given that Éire remained in the Commonwealth until 1949) and to accommodate people who had been British subjects during the creation of the new state. As for former colonial territories, the DNB tended to focus on the governments of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and South Africa. The Oxford DNB, while maintaining and increasing that coverage, aimed to extend the 'known-to-Whitehall' principle within other former colonial territories, such as those in other parts of Africa and in the Caribbean. Both the DNB and the Oxford DNB have sought to reflect the full range of national life, and to include noteworthy people of all kinds. Influence—whether for good or ill—is the principal criterion for admission. Coverage includes many people of achievement, merit, or worth, but is by no means confined to them: it is concerned also with impact, which may sometimes stem from celebrity and even from notoriety. As Lee wrote of the DNB: 'Malefactors whose crimes excite a permanent interest have received hardly less attention than benefactors.' He also pointed out that the DNB included eleven articles 'on legendary personages or creatures of romance who have been mistaken for heroes of history', (18) citing among others King Arthur and Merlin. A century of scholarship has exposed more such figments (St Bega, for example), whose continued presence is, in a sense, accidental. But Matthew sought to augment the various examples inherited from the DNB with a small but significant selection of articles on imaginary or at best shadowy subjects with an iconic status in the nation's political or cultural life (for instance, Junius and Tommy Atkins), together with figures whose standing in the national past is entirely symbolic (such as Britannia and John Bull). The plan for the Oxford DNB envisaged adding new people in every period (see Table 1 below) and in every field of activity, because 'even in well-covered areas time and changing historical interests have revealed gaps'. (19) Matthew also sought to build up coverage in fields that were poorly represented in the DNB: women; people in business and the world of labour; Britain's Roman rulers (whose names were not only familiar to anyone interested in the British past but even, in the case of Hadrian's Wall, embedded in the landscape); pre-independence Americans; and twentieth-century subjects. In addition Matthew aimed to expand the coverage of people of note from the regions of the British Isles and British territories overseas; people born abroad who spent a significant part of their lives in Britain; visitors who became important observers or interpreters of British life; and Britons who lived in Europe and played a significant part in the life of their new country. The twentieth century acquired more new entrants than any other. Quite apart from the need to include the lives of those who died between 1991 and 2000, for whom there had been no supplement, this increase sought to repair the reduced scale of the DNB's chronological supplements. (20) The DNB had included an annual average of about 160 people in the late-Victorian and Edwardian years, but in the chronological supplements covering those who died after 1911 this had fallen to about 80 a year. If the material in the DNB and its supplements was all to be included, the Oxford DNB needed to ensure that all periods were treated more consistently. In extending twentieth-century coverage, Matthew saw the need as being not only to expand existing categories and to include more newcomers from the general categories already identified for enlargement, but also to expand the treatment of such areas as technology, sport, media, and entertainment. The shortage of articles on women, and the way their lives were treated, had come to seem perhaps the DNB's most notorious weakness—and it was the one most frequently mentioned when opinions were canvassed on the need for a new dictionary. Women were scarce in the DNB partly because the division between 'public' and 'private' life had been particularly salient when it was being compiled. Many areas of women's activity were then categorized as private, thus seeming beyond the Dictionary's remit. A century later this would no longer do, if only because the line between the private and the public had always been blurred, and had subsequently shifted markedly. Many pathways into public life led out of the Victorian woman's distinctive domestic role—nursing, voluntary work, and charity, to name only three. In selecting the Oxford DNB's new lives, policy was set in such a way as to avoid limiting the recognition of women as valid candidates for inclusion (see Table 2 below). (21) The Dictionary's advisers were urged to identify women who could justifiably be added, and in considering all articles to review the treatment of women's activities and influence. The DNB's view of 'public' activity had also limited its coverage of business and the world of labour. When it included businessmen and labour leaders, it often did so on the basis of their other or subsequent interests, such as politics or philanthropy. It was less interested in how entrepreneurs made their money than in how they spent it, and it assessed their significance accordingly. Nor could the DNB's individualist format fully reflect the importance of family dynasties—a factor which accentuated the neglect of women in business and other contexts. Stephen's DNB, wrote Matthew in 1993, 'was ... with a few exceptions for medieval families, a dictionary of individuals very individually handled'. (22) Yet many people deeply influence British society without leaving behind much evidence about their careers because their impact stems only from participating in a larger group. The Dictionary's group and family articles offer a way of drawing in such people. By identifying the gaps in the DNB that needed to be filled, editorial priorities could be established and practical limits set to the work. The initial allowances for new entrants were not based on any predetermined and immutable scheme for assigning space between component areas in relation to the work as a whole. The editorial plan, which inherited the DNB's balance of selection, was designed to be flexible in the face of new perceptions as the work progressed. The overall balance of content was kept continuously under review, and new allocations were made as new recruits to the Dictionary were (or sometimes were not) found. Suggestions for new entrants arrived throughout the writing process, partly because the project team monitored many sources in pursuit of the overlooked. A few less important lives were commissioned but were not completed for want of adequate information. Some newcomers were captured late in the project, thanks to a fortunate conjuncture of idea and contributor. Serendipity and practicalities, as well as accumulated editorial policies, inevitably influenced the final selection—a point which needs to be remembered by anyone embarking upon a quantitative survey of the Dictionary's contents. The shape of the articlesMatthew had a clear view of what an article in the Dictionary should be like: it 'should be accurate, informative, clear, and interesting to read. Its purpose is to give a complete and balanced account of the life and work of its subject by supplying both detailed personal information and a general assessment of the subject's significance.' (23) It should remain a literary text, while at the same time delivering essential factual information predictably. Authors were encouraged to write accessibly for the general reader, and to treat lives in the round rather than focus on one aspect to the exclusion of others. The article should take the form of a biographical narrative, as in the DNB, with some modifications to the earlier pattern: most notably an ampler treatment of context, a more integrated treatment of personal relationships, and (in longer articles) fuller attention to the person's long-term reputation. Within the general shape, however, many variations were possible, depending on subject matter. Matthew felt that simultaneous publication electronically and in print should not change the article's essential characteristic as 'primarily a piece of prose and not a database with prose added'. (24)The Oxford DNB's editorial aims and conventions were set out in Notes for Contributors, a booklet sent to all authors, which went through several editions between 1994 and 1998. Articles begin with the DNB's customary opening: immediately after the entry name, life dates, and occupational statement, an account is given of the person's birth, parentage, and other family information. They usually place personal relationships in their chronological location rather than (as in the DNB) at the end of the article, and the account of death and burial generally occurs at or near the end. Longer articles are divided by subheadings, and normally end with an account of the subject's posthumous reputation—that is, with a summary of the person's continuing and often changing significance, including reference to drama, novels, films, television, and other popular media. The Oxford DNB has followed the twentieth-century supplements, however, in not including a complete list of a person's published works within the account of the life. Now that library catalogues are so abundant and full, the comprehensive booklists valued by the Victorians are no longer required. Instead, contributors have been encouraged to bring out in the text the significance of the person's principal publications. As for the supporting apparatus at the foot of each article, the aim has been that of the DNB: to make it 'an indispensable condition that writers should append to each article a full list of the sources whence their information was derived'. (25) However, the wider range of sources available by the 1990s required a fuller and more exact bibliographical description, and more avenues of research were by then available on which readers sought guidance. So the Oxford DNB provides not only bibliographical sources, but also other relevant material not necessarily used directly in compiling the article: lists of the person's archives (paper, sound, and film), likenesses, and records of wealth at death. What Matthew called 'the grammar of a New DNB article' was thus established—as relevant for an early Welsh saint as for a recent businessman. (26) Within this framework the individual authorial voice was prized. In December 1995, in the first Newsletter distributed to contributors, Matthew expressed a fear that authors might be 'a little too conscious of the dignity of a DNB article'; it was 'important not to be too academic', he said, for liveliness was 'a vital ingredient of a DNB article'. Contributors should not hesitate to record 'their candid assessment' of their subject, and significant anecdote was welcomed. (27) The treatment of personal matters was to be frank (though not prurient): 'the memoir is not a panegyric'. (28) Here, as elsewhere, Matthew was carrying forward DNB practice into a new context. At the dinner for the contributors held by George Smith at the Hotel Metropole on 8 July 1897, Canon Ainger had described the DNB's tone as 'no flowers, by request'. (29) His dictum applies as much to the new dictionary as to the old.
|
